(May 22, 2025)
Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that the cabinet’s dismissal of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar was “improper” and “unlawful.” The court found the firing lacked valid justification and was based on a “thin and shaky factual foundation.”
Expanding on the court’s reasoning, court president Justice Isaac Amit condemned the government’s failure to consult the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee.
Over the dissents of conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the emergency decision prevents authorities from removing the migrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as a legal challenge proceeds, a win for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is suing on the migrants’ behalf.
But the justices declined the ACLU’s additional request to leapfrog the lower courts to immediately take up the issue of whether President Trump can invoke the rarely used law outside of wartime.
“Today’s ruling effectively extends the temporary freeze that the justices put on Alien Enemies Act removals from the Northern District of Texas back on April 19,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown Law. “Because lower courts have blocked use of the act in every other district in which the president has sought to invoke it, that means it’s effectively pausing all removals under the act until the 5th Circuit – and, presumably, the Supreme Court itself – conclusively resolves whether they’re legal and how much process is due if so.”
The association criticised Israel for an „unprecedented ban preventing foreign journalists from entering Gaza“, calling the decision a „mark of shame for a country that claims to be a beacon of democracy“.
The FPA, which has filed an appeal with the Israeli Supreme Court challenging the ban, said its members „salute our Palestinian colleagues who continue to report the story at great personal risk“.
The amendments to the Unlawful Combatants Law were passed following the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 and currently enable banning a Gaza detainee from meeting with a lawyer for the first 45 days of his detention. During this time, Israeli authorities also refuse to inform family members of the person’s whereabouts. This refusal to provide information on a detainee’s location is contrary to its past practice and to Israel’s legal obligations. A petition against the Law, filed by human rights organizations, including HaMoked, has been pending for over a year now.
(April 23, 2025)
For nearly two months, Israel has deliberately and openly prevented the entry of any humanitarian aid including food, water, fuel, and medical equipment into the Gaza Strip. For more than a year, four Israeli human rights organizations, Gisha, Physicians for Human Rights, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual have led a principled legal petition in the High Court, demanding that Israel meet its legal obligations under Israeli and international law to ensure unfettered and immediate aid access to the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.
While the petition was still under deliberation, Israel announced the closure of all crossings into Gaza imposing a complete blockade since March 2. The state did not even claim that this extreme measure was related to military needs but admitted that it was a “political security” decision.
On March 27, the High Court rejected the petition, displaying disregard for the implications of this latest state policy on the fragile humanitarian situation in Gaza. Nearly everything is scarce in the Strip: since March 18, Israel has bombarded continuously via land, air, and sea, causing thousands of deaths and injuries; issued displacement orders that forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee; and as mentioned above, blocked all entry of goods and equipment to the strip for nearly two months.
Last week, the human rights organizations sent an urgent request demanding the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Defense Minister Israel Katz, open Gaza’s crossings immediately and enable consistent and unfettered aid supply and access.
Legally, submitting an affidavit is equivalent to providing binding testimony in court and, in exceptional cases, can also open the door to cross-examination.
This past Monday, Ronen Bar submitted a sharply critical affidavit to the High Court against the government and Netanyahu. In it, he claimed that the prime minister made „illegal requests“ at the end of work meetings, after asking that recording devices be turned off.
NIF grantee Zulat, an Israeli think tank advancing liberal values recently issued a formal call to Israel’s attorney general, state prosecutor, and police commissioner to open a new criminal investigation into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for possible obstruction of justice, misuse of the power and breach of trust.
The call comes on the heels of revelations of a new affidavit submitted to the High Court by Shin Bet security service chief Ronen Bar to stave off his dismissal.
– I authorized, following a request from the IDF Chief of Staff, the opening of an investigation into the theft of classified military documents and their transfer to media outlets.
– I refused to draft a legal opinion whose aim was effectively to prevent the possibility of the Prime Minister continuing to testify in his trial.
– The draft of the internal Shin Bet review was submitted to the Prime Minister. It refers to the service’s failure to prevent the massacre, while also presenting the long-standing policy of the political leadership regarding the Gaza Strip and the exceptional and repeated warnings delivered by the Shin Bet to the political echelon throughout 2023 – which were ignored.
– A letter was attached to the review, addressed to the Prime Minister, explaining how Hamas’s military buildup occurred before the eyes of the State of Israel, funded by Qatar and enabled by a defensive policy, and highlighting the need for a state commission of inquiry to investigate all aspects of the road that led to October 7.
Ferner heißt es in der Erklärung, Bar habe es abgelehnt, Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, welche zu Verzögerungen in einem gegen Netanjahu laufenden Korruptionsprozess geführt hätten. Dies sei auch der wahre Grund für seine vom Obersten Gericht gestoppte Entlassung als Geheimdienstchef, ließ Bar verlautbaren. Zudem beschuldigte Bar den Premier, von ihm persönliche Loyalität verlangt zu haben. Es bestand keine Zweifel daran, dass Bar im Falle einer Verfassungskrise Netanjahu und nicht dem Obersten Gerichtshof hätte dienen müssen, heißt es in der Erklärung.
Die Generalstaatsanwaltschaft publizierte das brisante Dokument Bars.
Karl asked the senator what Abrego Garcia shared during their meeting.
“He told me about the trauma he had been experiencing, both in terms of the abduction and the fact that he was originally sent to CECOT, which is this notorious prison,” Van Hollen said. “He specifically mentioned his 5-year-old boy who has autism, because that boy had been in the car with him when U.S. agents had stopped them and handcuffed him and then taken him away.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., on Sunday accused President Donald Trump of sending the U.S. into a constitutional crisis, saying members of the Trump administration “are very much flouting the courts as we speak.”
Asked directly on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” whether the U.S. is currently in a constitutional crisis, Van Hollen said, “Yes, we are.”
Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten! Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, through an Open Borders Policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing — But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!
The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration early Saturday from deporting another group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under the expansive powers of a rarely invoked wartime law.
“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the court said in a brief, unsigned order that gave no reasoning, as is typical in emergency cases.
The high court acted in an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union contending that immigration authorities appeared to be moving to restart removals under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The Supreme Court had said earlier in April that deportations could proceed only if those about to be removed had a chance to argue their case in court and were given “a reasonable time” to contest their pending removals.
(April 18, 2025)
The ACLU on Friday sought emergency action from the U.S. Supreme Court to protect Venezuelan men in immigration custody at risk of swiftly being deported under President Donald Trump‘s proclamation invoking an 18th-century wartime law.
It is unfortunate, then, that your letter disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court.
(…)
The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.
Head of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, attorney Eliad Shraga, accuses the prime minister and the government of trying to turn the Shin Bet domestic security agency into “the Stasi,” the feared secret police force in Communist East Germany.
Addressing the High Court of Justice in the hearing over the government’s firing of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, Shraga also alleges that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to install a new head of the service who would be specifically loyal to him.
The hearing will begin at 9 a.m. and will be broadcast on the Supreme Court’s website and the Judicial Authority’s YouTube channel.
Four opposition parties and four government watchdog groups filed petitions against Bar’s dismissal, arguing that since the Shin Bet is one of the agencies investigating the Qatargate affair involving alleged wrongdoing by Netanyahu’s aides, the decision to fire Bar was tainted by a conflict of interest and by ulterior, political motives.
J USTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE K AGAN and J USTICE J ACKSON join, and with whom J USTICE BARRETT joins as to Parts II and III–B, dissenting.
(…)
There is, of course, no ongoing war between the United States and Venezuela.
(…)
Congress requires the President to “mak[e] public proclamation” of his intention to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. §21. President Trump did just the opposite. In what can be understood only as covert preparation to skirt both the requirements of the Act and the Constitution’s guarantee of due process, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began moving Venezuelan migrants from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers across the country to the El Valle Detention Facility in South Texas before the President had even signed the Proclamation. ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, ___ 2025 WL 890401, *3 (D DC, Mar. 24, 2025). The transferred detainees, most of whom denied past or present affiliation with any gang, did not know the reason for their transfer until the evening of Friday, March 14, when they were apparently “pulled from their cells and told that they would be deported the next day to an unknown destination.”
B
Suspecting that the President had covertly signed a Proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act, several lawyers anticipated their clients’ imminent deportation and filed a putative class action in the District of Columbia. App. to Brief in Opposition To Application To Vacate 9a (App. to BIO). They contested that Tren de Aragua had committed or attempted the kind of “ ‘invasion’ ” or “ ‘predatory incursion’ ” required to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. Ibid. They also asserted that it would violate the Due Process Clause to deport their clients before they had any chance to challenge the Government’s allegations of gang membership. Id., at 26a. The plaintiffs did not seek release from custody, but asked the court only to restrain the Government’s planned deportations under the Proclamation. Id., at 9a, 29a.
In the early morning of March 15, the District Court informed the Government of the lawsuit and scheduled an emergency hearing. Despite knowing of plaintiffs’ claim
that it would be unlawful to remove them under the Proclamation, the Government ushered the named plaintiffs onto planes along with dozens of other detainees, all without any opportunity to contact their lawyers, much less notice or opportunity to be heard.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a 17-page dissent joined in full by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson and in part by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. She contended that her colleagues’ “decision to intervene in this litigation is as inexplicable as it is dangerous.”
Jackson wrote her own two-page dissent in which she lamented that the majority’s “fly-by-night approach to the work of the Supreme Court is not only misguided. It is also dangerous.”
The 1798 law at the center of the case is the Alien Enemies Act, which allows the president to detain or deport citizens of an enemy nation without a hearing or any other review by a court if either of two things occurs: Congress declares war, or there is an “invasion” or “predatory incursion.” The law has been invoked only three times – during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II.
The court’s action appears to bar the administration from immediately resuming the flights that last month carried hundreds of migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador. The flights came soon after President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since World War II to justify the deportations under a presidential proclamation calling the Tren de Aragua gang an invading force.
The majority said nothing about those flights, which took off without providing the hearing the justices now say is necessary.
The High Court of Justice‘s intervention in the dismissal of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar would harm the security of the state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued on Sunday in his response to a High Court petition to cancel the dismissal. The response came two days prior to a consequential court hearing on Tuesday on the legality of Bar’s removal.
In Justizkreisen hieß es am Freitag, dass am 18. April die sechsjährigen Amtszeiten des kommissarischen Präsidenten des Verfassungsgerichts Moon Hyung-bae sowie von Richterin Lee Mi-seon enden.
Da der kommissarische Präsident Han Deok-soo den Kandidaten Ma Eun-hyuk bislang nicht ernannt hat, gäbe es nach dem Ausscheiden der beiden erneut nur sechs Verfassungsrichter.
Throughout the evening, lawmakers quashed an unprecedented 71,023 objections filed by the opposition before finally voting 67-1 in favor of the legislation in the third and final reading, passing it into law.
In a fascist speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against his critics, insisting that the real danger, he claimed, is an unelected “deep state” working against the elected government.
(March 26, 2025)
The Judicial Selection Committee’s makeup since 1953 has included nine members – three High Court judges, two ministers, two members of Knesset (traditionally one coalition and one opposition), and two representatives of the Israel Bar Association (IBA). According to the new proposal, which will apply beginning with the next Knesset, the two IBA members will be replaced by two “public representatives”, one appointed by the coalition and the other by the opposition.
The petitions will be heard by a panel consisting of Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, incoming Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg and Justice Daphne Barak-Erez.
The three are the most senior justices on the bench. Both Amit and Barak-Erez are liberals, while Sohlberg is a staunch conservative.
The official said the current eight-member bench deliberated on Yoon’s case after dismissing the parliamentary impeachment motion against Prime Minister Han Duck-soo earlier Monday.
It has been 27 days since the court wrapped up arguments in Yoon’s trial.
Histadrut labor union chief Arnon Bar-David warns that he won’t sit idly if the government doesn’t abide by High Court rulings after ministers dismissed the injunction issued by the top legal body. However, Bar-David doesn’t explicitly say that he’ll launch a labor strike if the government ignores the High Court, but …
Defence minister‘s threats to annex Gaza distract from legislative coup d‘état at home
Document published by justice minister, hours after government voted to oust Shin Bet chief, calls Gali Baharav-Miara ‘long arm of the opposition,’ says she runs a tyrannical authority
srael‘s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said earlier Friday that the prime minister was not allowed to appoint a new internal security agency chief after the government decided to sack Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.
„According to the decision of the Supreme Court, it is prohibited to take any action that harms the position of the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar,“ she said in a message to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu published by a spokesperson. „It is prohibited to appoint a new head of Shin Bet, and interviews for the position should not be held.“
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweets, “There will be no civil war!” hours after Israel’s most revered jurist, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, expressed his fear that the country is heading in that direction due to the government’s recent efforts to fire the head of the Shin Bet security agency and the attorney general.
“The State of Israel is a country of law and according to the law, the Israeli government decides who will be the head of the Shin Bet,” Netanyahu tweets, before adding, “Shabbat Shalom.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir responds to the High Court’s temporary injunction against the dismissal of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar with a post on X reading: “Judicial overhaul now!”
Ben Gvir was reinstated to his post earlier this week when his Otzma Yehudit party returned to the government following Israel’s resumed offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The order will remain in place until the court can hear the petitions that have been filed against his dismissal.
It says it will hear the petitions no later than April 8.
The government voted overnight to remove Bar from his position by April 10 at the latest.
The attempt to fire Mr. Bar is likely to be contested in the country’s Supreme Court.
Die internationale Gemeinschaft beobachte die Republik Korea mit großer Aufmerksamkeit, sagte Choi weiter. Er rief die Bürger auf, auf der Grundlage von Respekt und Verständnis für Unterschiede ein reifes Bürgerbewusstsein zu zeigen.
The Constitutional Court will issue its rulings Thursday morning on the impeachment of three prosecutors and the head of the state audit agency.