Salim Joubran

Salim Joubran (Arabic: سليم جبران‎‎, Hebrew: סלים ג'ובראן‎‎; born 1947) is an Israeli Arab judge on the Supreme Court of Israel. He has served as a Supreme Court justice since 2003 and became a permanent member in May 2004. Joubran is the first Arab to receive a permanent appointment in the Supreme Court. He is the second Arab judge to hold a supreme court appointment, preceded by Abdel Rahman Zuabi, who held a fixed nine-month appointment in 1999.

Salim Joubran was born in 1947 in the German Colony neighborhood of Haifa, Mandatory Palestine to an Arab Christian family of Maronite Lebanese origin.

He graduated from the Terra Santa School of the Franciscan Order in Acre. He earned a law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and entered private practice as a lawyer in 1970.

In 1982, Joubran left private practice after 12 years to accept an appointment as a judge on Haifa's Magistrate's Court, where he served for 11 years. In 1993, he was appointed to Haifa's district court, and served in that capacity for another 10 years, following which he was elevated to the Supreme Court first as a temporary and then as a permanent judge.

Joubran is an expert on criminal law. He was also the first Arab to chair the Central Elections Committee. In the Israeli municipal elections, 2013, he barred the national ruling party Likud's adverts for being "racist and almost certain to hurt the feelings of Arab Israelis and disrupt public order." This also overruled the advice of Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein who suggested the committee had no authority to regulate online adverts and posters.

Joubran was a lecturer at the Law Faculty at the University of Haifa. He served as governor of Israel Rotary (dist. 2490) and chairman of the Zeltner Fund for legal research sponsored by Rotary Israel and Tel Aviv University.