## Facts

- Israeli law provides for compulsory military service, while authorizing the Minister of Defense to defer or exempt service under the Defense Service Law.
- Since 1948, a longstanding administrative policy permitted full-time ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students to receive repeated conscription deferments so long as they remained in full-time study, often resulting in no regular service.
- Petitioners were IDF reservists who challenged the policy, asserting it shifted the reserve-service burden onto those who served.
- Petitioners submitted evidence, including an affidavit from a former senior IDF manpower official, indicating that the deferments increased the length and frequency of reserve duty for other reservists and that drafting yeshiva students would reduce that burden.
- The petition sought judicial review of (1) the petitioners’ standing, (2) the justiciability of the policy, and (3) the policy’s legality and administrative reasonableness under statutory authority.

## Issues

1. Whether reservists alleging increased reserve-duty burdens due to broad deferments for yeshiva students have standing to challenge the policy.
2. Whether the legality and reasonableness of a politically and religiously sensitive conscription-deferment policy is justiciable.
3. Whether the Minister of Defense exceeded statutory authority, or acted unreasonably or discriminatorily, by maintaining a broad, ongoing deferment arrangement that functioned as a de facto exemption for a defined group.

## Decision

- The court held the petitioners had standing because they demonstrated a reasonable prospect that their personal interest was prejudiced by the deferment policy through increased reserve-service burdens.
- The court held the matter was justiciable because it concerned statutory authority and administrative legality, even if the subject carried political and social sensitivity.
- On the merits, the court declined to invalidate the policy, holding that at the time it fell within the Minister’s statutory discretion.
- The court emphasized that the policy raised serious equality concerns and required periodic reassessment; an expanding scope could later fail administrative-law standards.

## Legal Principles

- Standing may be based on prejudice to a legally cognizable personal interest, even if the interest is widely shared and does not amount to a private right.
- Courts may review executive conscription policies for legality, statutory compliance, and administrative reasonableness notwithstanding political or religious controversy.
- Statutory discretion to defer or exempt service can support category-based arrangements, but discretion is limited by administrative-law constraints, including reasonableness and non-discrimination.
- A policy upheld at one point in time remains subject to future challenge if changing circumstances make its scope or effects unreasonable.

## Conclusion

The court opened the door to public-law challenges by recognizing standing for reservists with a concrete service-burden injury and by treating the deferment arrangement as judicially reviewable, but it upheld the yeshiva-student deferment policy as within statutory discretion at that time while warning that growth in its scope could render it unlawful under administrative-law standards.


Ressler v. Minister of Def., HCJ 910/86, 42(2) PD 441 (Isr. 1988)