Dear Chaim,
Thanks for the response last week. I grant your point and agree with you that there are tremendous scholars in the national religious sector and worthy enough to be called the greatest. In fact, I think an appropriate hashkafa for today's world requires a great deal of wisdom and that in itself improves the standing of given rabbis. However, when I said what I said last week in my question about haredi figures as the "greatest" Torah scholars who may abstain and/or oppose regarding a reconstituted Sanhedrin under a JTF/hayamin haamiti govt, I was speaking mainly from the perspective of public perception. In general, even if you and I disagree with the view, I think the Torah world, ie the masses, do view certain haredi gedolim as the greatest Torah scholars with the highest standing and highest level of understanding of complex Jewish law. For instance, there are even many religious zionist settlers who will look to their religious zionist Rav for guidance with regards to national issues, for example, related to building, working, army service, etc. however when it comes to complex individual laws, like laws of Shabbat or kashrut and whether a given item is kasher, they will look at the haredi gedolim as the leaders in this regard. This is not true for all religious zionist Jews, but I think it may be a sizable amount. Needless to say, the haredim I've encountered certainly view the haredi gedolim as the supreme authorities and they (mistakenly) view other types of rabbis as lower-stature scholars by default. Given this common public perception, right or wrong, it seems that a reconstituted Sanhedrin may have credibility/authority issues. However, you make a good point that haredim won't want to "sit out" and let the national religious basically control religious life, so they may feel compelled to participate anyway.
But how will the secular Jews in Israel be sold on this institution and its importance, and what will be the interaction with the Sanhedrin and this new breed of Jew that was not known in ancient times (ie, secular Jews are called tinok shenishba by Rav Moshe Feinstein and other great authorities who followed him - they are a new concept in Jewish law). How will the Sanhedrin impact secular Jewish life in Israel and in what ways would it not for reasons of practicality or the difficult equation of trying to manage national Jewish life even though many of the Jews themselves are secular?
Thanks Chaim. All the best.