Secret Appointments: Hong Kong’s Experience in Selecting Judges

Julius Yam

Following the constitutional reforms proposed by the Netanyahu regime, Moshe Cohen-Eliya and Iddo Porat’s essay, A New Deal to the Israeli Judicial System, suggests ways of reforming the Israeli judicial appointment system and the court’s constitutional interpretative approach. The authors aim to depoliticize the Israeli judiciary and regulate the political control around judicial appointment.
One proposal they make is to shift judicial appointment power from the Judicial Selection Committee to the Knesset. Under this plan, judicial candidates nominated by a selection committee must receive at least two-thirds of the legislative votes in order to become judges. The authors also recommend that deliberations within the nomination committee remain confidential.
These suggestions resemble Hong Kong’s existing judicial appointment system, in which the political branches of government control judicial appointments, but judicial candidates are recommended by a commission whose deliberations are kept secret. By recounting Hong Kong’s experiences in this regard, this short commentary sheds light on the possible effects of the authors’ proposal and the conditions under which it might be effective in improving a judiciary’s legitimacy.

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