Noam Sohlberg

Sohlberg is the son of Holocaust survivors and grew up in Israel. He is religious, lives in Alon Shvut in Gush Etzion, and has five children; one daughter, Hadas, died after a serious illness.[7]

The Jerusalem Post has characterized him as Religious Zionist, a graduate of Israel’s state-religious school system and Yeshivat Har Etzion, and a conservative jurist from Gush Etzion. These are characterizations in a published opinion profile rather than details of his judicial rulings.[8]

Sohlberg worked in the State Attorney’s Office and, from 1991 to 1998, served as an assistant to Attorneys General Yosef Harish, Michael Ben-Yair, and Elyakim Rubinstein. He was appointed to the Jerusalem Magistrate Court in 1998 and promoted to the Jerusalem District Court in 2005. In January 2012, the Judicial Selection Committee chose him and three other judges for the Supreme Court.[2] Much of his earlier judicial work was in civil law, including defamation, though he later handled administrative-law cases as well.[9]

During his work in the Attorney General’s office, Sohlberg participated in work connected to the Ne’eman Committee on conversion, established in 1997 amid disputes over recognition of Reform and Conservative conversions. The committee sought solutions acceptable to political, legal, and religious groups.[7] In 1993, while assisting Harish, Sohlberg drafted a proposed High Court submission arguing that appointing Aryeh Deri as a minister while he faced the threat of indictment was extremely unreasonable. His later approach to reasonableness review moved substantially away from that position.[7]

Sohlberg’s Supreme Court appointment followed months of deadlock in the Judicial Selection Committee and attracted controversy. Reporting linked his candidacy to support from right-wing political figures, his religious identity, and his residence in Alon Shvut. Colleagues regarded the association of his candidacy with “settler” and religious labels as unfair, arguing that he should be considered on his professional merits.[2] Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman later persuaded then-president Dorit Beinisch to support the appointment.[7]

In August 2023, Sohlberg joined the Judicial Selection Committee, which appoints judges, replacing Justice Uzi Vogelman after Vogelman’s three-year term expired. The appointment was reported in the context of Sohlberg’s description as a conservative, while the same account noted that he had joined a unanimous Supreme Court ruling against the coalition’s Tiberias law.[10]

Sohlberg took the oath of office as deputy president of the Supreme Court on April 10, 2025. At the ceremony, he called for patience among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches and said that not everything should be decided in court.[1] By 2026, he was also chair of the Central Elections Committee for the 26th Knesset.[6]

In 2017, while serving on the Supreme Court, Sohlberg attended a ceremony marking 50 years of settlement in the territories. The Supreme Court president had decided he could attend as a private individual.[7]

Sohlberg has argued for limits on the use of the reasonableness doctrine to review decisions by elected officials. In a 2019 speech, he maintained that broad use of the standard could take courts beyond their proper function and into the executive branch’s sphere. He distinguished elected officials, whose decisions may express policy or worldview, from professional officials implementing policy, and considered review of the latter more legitimate.[11]

That distinction became politically influential during the 2023 debate over legislation limiting judicial review. After coalition politicians invoked his earlier criticism, Sohlberg clarified that he had not intended legislative change but instead envisioned a gradual trend brought about through court rulings. A clarification issued on his behalf said he was not taking a position on the legislation then under consideration.[7]

His record also includes applying the reasonableness doctrine against government action. In September 2022, he ruled against the then-government’s appointment of former Supreme Court justice Menachem Mazuz to head the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee, citing the more limited discretion of an interim government without a mandate from voters.[12]

On June 9, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that the Law on the Regulation of Settlement in Judea and Samaria—the original, indigenous Jewish name for the territory also known as the West Bank—was unconstitutional and should be annulled. Sohlberg was the sole dissenter.[3] He accepted that the law’s effects on property and equality rights justified judicial review but urged particular caution because of its political nature. He regarded regulation and development of settlements as a proper purpose and the law as a pragmatic response to a complicated reality.[3]

Rather than annul the law outright, Sohlberg proposed narrowing its scope to residential structures, public buildings, and essential infrastructure, while excluding agricultural facilities and means of production. He also proposed excluding cases based only on consent from local authorities or institutions involved in settlement activity where no government authority had consented. He warned that annulment would produce “stagnation, uncertainty, and eviction and destruction that for the most part would be useless to the owners of the land.”[3]

In July 2021, Sohlberg joined the majority rejecting petitions against Basic Law: Israel—The Nation State of the Jewish People. The majority held that the Basic Law did not negate Israel’s democratic character and could be interpreted consistently with other Basic Laws and established principles. It said it would have been preferable to state equality expressly, but that the omission did not diminish equality’s constitutional status.[13]

In a separate case that month, the Court’s majority struck down an amendment withholding social benefits paid for a minor child from parents while the child was imprisoned for a serious security offense. The majority found that the categorical withholding disproportionately infringed equality, including because it did not examine the parent’s conduct or connection to the offense. Sohlberg joined the dissent, reasoning that the arrangement did not infringe equality and permissibly distinguished security offenses from ordinary crimes rather than Jews from Arabs.[13]

In January 2024, the Supreme Court struck down an amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary that barred judicial review of government and ministerial decisions on grounds of reasonableness. The decision was 8–7, with Sohlberg among the dissenters. He and Justice David Mintz disputed the Court’s authority to review the content of Basic Laws, including its authority to decide whether it possessed that power. They found no source of authority for such review and considered the amendment far from the narrow limit on the Knesset’s constituent power identified by the majority.[4][14]

In November 2025, Sohlberg authored a ruling requiring criminal and economic enforcement against ultra-Orthodox draft evaders. The panel imposed deadlines for considering the removal of benefits and other enforcement measures after the government failed to implement the applicable military-service law.[6]

In February 2025, Sohlberg dissented from a High Court decision voiding rabbinical-court child-support rulings made without the parties’ consent. He proposed rejecting the petitions, arguing that the Shragai rule was intended to improve women’s bargaining power in divorce proceedings. He contended that petitioners sought to use the rule to reduce rabbinical-court child-support awards, harming women’s rights contrary to its purpose. His proposed interpretation would allow broad reimbursement claims in rabbinical courts while leaving open a separate suit on behalf of the child in family court.[15]

In May 2025, Sohlberg dissented in the case concerning the government’s dismissal of Shin Bet director Ronen Bar. The government canceled its dismissal decision before judgment, and Sohlberg considered the matter moot. He nevertheless wrote that the decision-making process appeared to raise a significant difficulty.[16]

In July 2025, he wrote a unanimous judgment holding that the Chief Rabbinate could not bar women from its religious certification examinations. The judgment reasoned that the exams serve purposes beyond qualification for rabbinic office: recognition of religious learning can also affect employment and salary, making exclusion unlawful discrimination.[5]

Sohlberg’s appointment, judicial philosophy, and opinions have figured in public disputes over judicial power and the role of the courts. His dissent in the settlement Regularization Law case and his positions in the two 2021 cases placed him on different sides of contested disputes about property and equality.[3][13] His dissent in the January 2024 Basic Law proceedings concerned the Court’s constitutional authority and the proper scope of judicial review.[4]

His views on reasonableness review also became part of the debate over judicial legislation. Although politicians cited his criticism of broad judicial review, Sohlberg clarified that he had contemplated change through judicial rulings rather than legislation and was not taking a position on the bill then being considered.[7][11]

On June 3, 2026, extremist ultra-Orthodox protesters attacked Sohlberg’s home in Alon Shvut amid tensions over draft enforcement. They smashed windows, damaged his car, and attempted to enter the house. Police arrested 62 people, and four men were later indicted. The report presented the violence in the context of disputes surrounding his draft-enforcement rulings and described it as a direct threat against a judge and his family.[6]