Aharon Barak's True Colors

Ruth Gavison is, in many crucial ways, Aharon Barak's worst nightmare. Arguably Israel's most celebrated legal scholar, a lifelong activist for human and civil rights, a longtime proponent of peace negotiations with Israel's Arab neighbors, she is also the most eloquent and outspoken critic of the extreme judicial activism that the chief justice has made the hallmark of his tenure.

And now she is the government's leading candidate for a spot on the bench.

Judicial selection is an odd thing in Israel. Very few democratic countries allow the judges on the highest court any say in picking their own successors; it is perceived as a violation of the separation of powers, and of the people's fundamental right to choose who will rule over them in a relatively direct fashion.

In Israel, however, the sitting justices not only have a say, but carry the decisive bloc of three votes in the nine-person Judicial Selection Committee. Among those three, the chief justice - who not only sets the agenda of the court but also decides which justices will hear what cases - carries overwhelming authority. As a result, the Israeli Supreme Court has become insular and self-perpetuating, steadily advancing a particular ideology - universalist, deferential to international law, uninterested in Jewish legal tradition - and passing it on from one generation to the next.

But now Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, as representative of the elected government and chair of the selections committee, has decided to put a stop to this, and is refusing to convene the selections committee - leaving three slots on the High Court unfilled - as long as Barak maintains his opposition to Gavison's appointment.