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20 Ellul 5760 - September 20, 2000 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Opinion & Comment
Barak and Barak, Ltd.

by A. Zisman

A riddle. What is the most classified and guarded institution in the country? A hint: We aren't talking about the atomic reactor in Dimona, nor about the IDF operations room at headquarters in Tel Aviv nor the petroleum stores in Glilot Junction.

We are talking about the Committee for the Election of Judges. That committee is the most classified body in the entire country. The President of the High Court, Aharon Barak, guards the minutes of the committee meetings, and the reports of all their deliberations with utmost care.

Only excerpts of these minutes such as those on the differences of opinion between the Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and Barak on various issues are publicly released.

Precisely now, it is worthwhile to raise the forthcoming issue, which is somehow linked to the discussion of the committee and the decisions it makes.

For a long time, judicial circles have been raising eyebrows over the meteoric rise of Justice Elisheva Barak. Licensed as a lawyer not so early in her life, she was appointed a District Labor Court judge, and will now be promoted to the senior position of Deputy Chief judge of the National Labor Court.

As is known, the Supreme Court, in its function as a High Court, also functions as a court of appeals for the rulings of the National Labor Court.

"It is inconceivable that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court should be the primary deciding factor who directly or indirectly approves his wife's rulings," legal experts claim.

Recently, the National Labor Court issued a revolutionary ruling to which Mrs. Barak was a partner. The ruling determined that a clause in a work contract forbidding a worker from competing with his employer after he has stopped working for him, has no validity.

This ruling, which deviates from all the norms of the previous ruling, and the constraining laws of the High Court was sharply criticized by employers and legal academics.

In an article in Globes the retired National Labor court chief justice Menachem Goldberg sharply criticized this ruling, noting that it contradicts the existing rulings of the High Court. Goldberg said that he presumes that this ruling will change when it reaches the High Court for a critical analysis.

However, a well known legal expert who examined the ruling of the National Labor Court noted, in closed circles, that there is little possibility that Goldberg's hope will materialize. She said that there is no doubt that a ruling made in the National Labor Court, where Mrs. Barak is a judge, will be approved by the High Court. This is because the President of the High Court is Aharon Barak, and it is he who determines the composition of judges who deliberate on the cases that reach the Supreme Court.

Indeed, a ruling of the High Court, recently issued by Aharon Barak, has on principle approved the law determined by the ruling given by Mrs. Barak in the National Labor Court.

To the question of the Globe's correspondent, as to whether Barak thinks that he should refrain from deliberating on issues in which his wife is one of the formulators of the ruling, he replied, by means of the court spokesman, with one word: "No."

The so called "democratic and enlightened" public regards Barak as the ultimate in honesty and decency. Has he behaved that way this time? Does he behave that way in similar instances?

Imagine a case in which a dayan in the Beis Din Hagodol in Jerusalem approves a ruling that his son or brother gave in a district Rabbinical court. Would it receive Barak's seal of approval? Only the Baraks know for sure.


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