The government’s highly controversial judicial overhaul agenda returned to the public stage in dramatic fashion on Sunday, as numerous High Court justices tore into a law passed by the coalition last year that would greatly increase political control over judicial appointments.

During a hearing over the measure, justices from both the court’s liberal and conservative wings asserted that the law would politicize not only the Supreme Court but the entire judiciary, and radicalize it at the same time.

Supreme Court President Isaac Amit said the law, if allowed to stand, would “implant a political chip” in every Supreme Court judge and “write on their foreheads” that they were appointed by the coalition or opposition.

In another comment, Amit said the law, an amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary, constituted “a change of regime,” in response to comments by one of the government’s lawyers that governments are entitled to change Israel’s constitutional arrangements.

Justice Alex Stein, a conservative, asserted that the new method for appointing judges would incentivize judges to adjust their rulings to curry favor with politicians in order to obtain promotions, while Justice Yechiel Kasher, a conservative-leaning moderate, insisted it would lead to extremist judges being appointed to the Supreme Court.

Of the 11 judges presiding over the hearing, nine were critical of one or more components of the law, indicating that the legislation may not survive the court’s judicial review.

The court’s two staunchest conservatives, Deputy President Noam Sohlberg and Justice David Mintz, were dubious as to the need for judicial intervention over the legislation, and repeated their previously expressed opposition to judicial review over Israel’s quasi-constitutional Basic Laws.

The oral arguments over the petitions, filed by several liberal government watchdog groups and the Yesh Atid opposition party, were heard by all 11 justices currently serving on the court, which only convenes its full roster to review the most constitutionally significant cases.

MK Simcha Rothman, who, as chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, advanced the law through the legislative process, denounced the court for even holding a hearing over the legislation, since it was passed as an amendment to a Basic Law, which Rothman and many other coalition figures argue is not subject to judicial review.

“A judge who rules on the question of how judges are appointed in a democratic country and in a Basic Law that was passed in the Knesset by a majority of 68 Knesset members is a criminal,” declared Rothman of the far-right Religious Zionism party, who, together with Justice Minister........

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