Israel is the world leader in the number of attorneys per capita, and it is one of the factors leading to overloaded courts and long legal wait times, according to Supreme Court Justice Yitzhak Amit.
There were multiple factors leading to the well-recognized burden on the court system, he said Sunday in a decision on a High Court of Justice petition by a person who had been arrested for drug offenses in March, who was to be detained until hearings in October or November, and who had appealed to have the case be moved up on the Beersheba Magistrate Court’s schedule. Other factors included the amount of civil cases and judges, he added.
“The amount of civil cases opened in Israel per 100,000 inhabitants is almost twice the average amount of cases opened in European states,” Amit said. “The standard of judges in Israel is only a third of the average number of judges per 100,000 inhabitants in European states.”
Israel has 820 lawyers per 100,000 people
These factors had led to packed schedules for judges, the prolongation of proceedings, and “tortured” those in cases with an endless legal system, especially if they were to be detained until the end of the judgment, he said.More than 77,000 attorneys were eligible to vote in the June 20 Israel Bar Association elections. These practicing lawyers made up 0.82% of the population, or one lawyer for about 121 people, or 820 lawyers per 100,000 people.European states had an average of 164 lawyers per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020, according to a Council of Europe report.
In 2020, Israel had 739 professional judges, or almost eight judges per 100,000 people, the Council of Europe reported. On average, European states had 18 judges per 100,000 people, according to the European Union.According to Yechiel Kasher, an attorney at Tadmor Levy & Co., Israel was a “highly litigious country with the highest numbers of lawyers per capita, and an overwhelming number of claims filed each year.”In 2018, some 854,000 new claims and appeals were filed, or about one claim per 10 people, he wrote in the US-Israel Legal Review 2020.
In his opinion on Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Yosef Elron said it was important to conduct criminal proceedings in an efficient manner to avoid heavy loads.Ultimately, the High Court should not interfere in the Beersheba Magistrate Court’s right to set its scheduling, Amit and his colleagues said, adding that filing a petition does not allow a person to skip the line.The lower court had tried to give the petitioner the earliest hearing date and said it would move him up if an earlier date became available, the justices said.
In his opinion on Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Yosef Elron said it was important to conduct criminal proceedings in an efficient manner to avoid heavy loads.Ultimately, the High Court should not interfere in the Beersheba Magistrate Court’s right to set its scheduling, Amit and his colleagues said, adding that filing a petition does not allow a person to skip the line.The lower court had tried to give the petitioner the earliest hearing date and said it would move him up if an earlier date became available, the justices said.