In Israel, all proceedings in family court cases are conducted behind closed doors and are subject to confidentiality restrictions. As a result, most decisions and rulings in this field do not reach the knowledge of the public, litigants, attorneys, and judges. This limits legal certainty, research in the field, and public oversight.
For over a decade, the Rackman Center has championed the issue of transparency in family law rulings. This week, we participated in a Knesset Committee discussion of a bill to allow the publication of rulings in family law cases – a bill that we wrote and which is now being promoted by MK Simcha Rothman and MK Gilad Kariv.
Adv. Shelly Blatt Zak, CEO of the Rackman Center, explains:
“Publishing rulings in the family law field is clearly necessary. Despite the various reservations raised by government ministry officials, our position at the Rackman Center is that there is no impediment to applying the legal amendment in full, to all judgments and substantive decisions given in family courts and religious courts, including in interim proceedings and cases of adoption, guardianship and domestic violence matters. Despite the great sensitivity and significant power gaps between the litigating parties in such cases, the need for legal certainty and proper public oversight is even greater.”
“Additionally, in our opinion, the required budget increase is not significant, and the change could be implemented without adding staff and processes, but rather by training those who write up decisions and judgments to do so in an anonymized manner, as is already done in certain cases in the Supreme Court.”
Further discussion on the issue will take place during the Knesset recess, in the hope that the bill will be brought for approval of the first reading as soon as the winter session opens.
The Knesset Committee accepted our proposal to clarify in the text of the bill that all substantive decisions will be required to be published (and not just final judgments, as was proposed), with the definition of “substantive” to be discussed in the next discussion.
Read more (in Hebrew) : The Black Hole of the Legal System: The Bill That Seeks to Expose Family Court Rulings.
