The INSTRUCTOR: Professor Ruth Gavison

Ruth Gavison is the Haim Cohn Professor of Human Rights at the Faculty of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Founding President of Metzilah – a center for Zionist, Jewish, Humanist and Liberal Thought. Prof. Gavison was a founding member of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), where she then served as Chairperson for many years, and as President from 1996 to 1999. She was a visiting professor at the Yale Law School (1978-1980) and the University of Southern California Law Center (1990-1992). She is the author and editor of many articles and several books in Israel, the most recent being Legal Activism: The Pros and Cons; the Role of the Supreme Court in Israeli Society (2000) and Where there is no vision- the people cast off restraint: A meta-purpose for Israel and Its Implications (2007). Prof. Gavison has a B.A. in Economics, Philosophy, an LLB and LLM from the Hebrew University and a D.Phil in Legal Philosophy from Oxford University. She earned the Emet Prize in Law (2003), and recently served as a member in the Winograd Commission investigating the 2nd Lebanon War (September 2006 to January 2008).

You can find her full background, along with a list of her many publications here.