Judges watchdog clears Hayut of any conflict violation

Rebukes another justice for nondisclosure.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
SUPREME COURT President Esther Hayut shares the bench with Justice Uri Shoham. (photo credit: Courtesy)
SUPREME COURT President Esther Hayut shares the bench with Justice Uri Shoham.
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Ombudsman for Complaints Against Judges Uri Shoham on Monday cleared Supreme Court President Esther Hayut of any violation of conflict-of-interest principles following a complaint by Likud MK Shlomo Karai.
Karai sent Shoham, a retired Supreme Court justice, information based on articles by Kalman Liebskind of Maariv in which he revealed six alleged violations by Hayut where she should have recused herself or revealed various kinds of connections she had to parties involved in a case or a promotion.
The ombudsman slammed those criticizing the justices as having ulterior motives unrelated to the public good.
According to Shoham, “The attacks and brashness that we have been witness to… will not advance the purpose of greater transparency for the system, and it certainly has no connection whatsoever to the desire to prevent conflicts of interest among the judges.”
Shoham accepted Hayut’s representation that the three cases she referred to former judge Hila Gerstl for arbitration had been referred on the basis of Gerstl’s professional credentials and not their close friendship.
Regarding her pressing to appoint one of her former clerks to a judgeship, he accepted Hayut’s statement that since six years had passed since the clerkship, there was no conflict for her to support the appointment given that the candidate was qualified to be a judge.
Next, Shoham agreed with Hayut that it was not problematic for Hayut to hear an appeal against Anat Baron when she was a district court judge, nor was it problematic to support her candidacy for the Supreme Court despite their being close friends.
According to the decision, Baron was a qualified district court judge, and hearing an appeal against her or supporting her candidacy is a frequent occurrence with judges who know each other given that the country and the judiciary are relatively small.
Last, Shoham accepted the explanation that Hayut could hire a law clerk who was the daughter of a lawyer who is on her list of lawyers whose cases she cannot hear due to a conflict of interest.
Hayut explained that the conflict comes from a connection between the lawyer and her husband and that she has no direct relationship with him.
Conflict-of-interest principles dictate that judges cannot rule on a case where an immediate relative is one of the key parties to a litigation.
However, all of the above cases fall into grayer areas where the connection or potential conflict is one or two levels removed.
In such cases, the judges are trusted to recuse themselves if they feel they will have a conflict.
The fact that judges have this independence in making such decisions about their own conflicts is part of what has brought such heavy criticism on the system.
Liebskind’s article drew attention to the absence of a clear standard or set of benchmarks that all of the justices were consistently following in such gray-area cases.
However, supporters of the judiciary say this entire issue is only being raised now to delegitimize the courts just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bribery trial is starting.
A second hearing in his case is set for Sunday.
Separately, Shoham criticized an unnamed additional High Court justice for failing to disclose to the parties in a litigation before him that his daughter worked at a government agency involved in the case.
Under conflict of interest principles, the justice did not need to recuse himself from the case. But Shoham said it would have been better had the justice publicly declared the issue to the parties so as to prevent any inference of impropriety.


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