For our Website in English please click here 

We act to:

• Engage Israeli institutions of higher education with the pressing social issues of the day;
• Develop the intellectual and social change capabilities of a new generation of Jewish and Arab students who will go on to become active citizens and leaders for social change in their communities;
• Bring academic knowledge into deeper engagement with community organizations.

We integrate the resources and capabilities of students, faculty members, institutions of higher education and social change organizations by:

• Encouraging institutions of higher education to develop a policy of social engagement;
• Supporting faculty members in developing community-engaged courses ("service learning courses") that combine theoretical study with student internships in community organizations;
• Organizing workshops, seminars and conferences to exchange, develop and disseminate knowledge and experience regarding community-engaged learning and campus-community partnerships.

SCHOLARSHIP AND ACTIVISM

COMMUNITY-ENGAGED POLICY

KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE AND ADVOCACY

•  Workshops for faculty members teaching community-engaged courses or interested in developing such courses, to discuss topics such as service learning pedagogy, work with civil society organizations and evaluation.
• Student seminars, both local and national, to encourage and enhance Jewish and Arab students' action in social change organizations, focusing on issues such as critical pedagogy, community organizing, legal aid, and human rights advocacy.
• An annual conference for all stakeholders in campus-community programs, to present knowledge about engaged policies, best practices, and research of community-engaged courses.

Tel.

+972 (0)2-588-1389 

Fax

+972 (0)2-588-2968

E-Mail

campuschange@savion.huji.ac.il

Address

Campus-Community Partnership

Faculty of Law

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501 Israel

The Center for Empirical Legal Studies of Decision Making and the Law brings together researchers from different fields from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Center is an initiative of the government of Israel to generate innovative empirical legal research, particularly in the field of decision making and the law. The Center is expected to make a significant intellectual and practical contribution both from an intellectual and a practical perspective. With respect to the former, the studies conducted in the Center shed new light on ongoing debates regarding the way in which the law influences behavior. They answer questions such as: are people rational or are their decisions biased in a systematic fashion; and does the law function merely as a price-setting device, or does it affect behavior in other, more subtle ways? As to the latter, the findings of the studies will likely lend themselves to numerous concrete policy debates. The Center is supported by the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the Israel Science Foundation.

i-Core Website

The Institute cooperates with various criminal justice and welfare agencies in Israel, particularly by organizing symposia, lectures and research consultations. Members of the Institute are active in various national and international scholarly organizations, such as the Israel Council of Criminology, the American Society of Criminology, the Campbell Collaboration, the Academy of Experimental Criminology, and the Deviance and Social Control Committee of the International Sociological Association. Institute faculty members are active in publishing in international as well as Israeli journals, and serve as editors or on the editorial boards of major international journals in the fields of criminology, sociology of law, and victimology. The Journal of Experimental Criminology is housed in the Institue.

An annual public lecture or symposium is held in memory of the founder of the Institute, the late Professor Israel Drapkin. Recent topics have included drug policy, political crime, and policing.

The Institute of Criminology website (soon)

The Israel Matz Institute for Jewish Law at the Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, is located on Mount Scopus, in one of the original buildings of the Hebrew University, built in 1925. Since its inception in 1963, on the initiative of the then deputy to the President of the Israel Supreme Court, Prof. (emeritus) Menachem Elon, it is now occupies a leading place in the teaching and researching of Jewish Law. The Institute’s affiliation with both the Faculty of Law and the Institute of Jewish Studies reflects its founders’ goal of combining the research methods in Jewish Law with the classical methods of Jewish Studies. Over the past forty years, the Institute has made major contributions to academic research in the area of Jewish Law and is considered a leader in its field.

The Institute’s main achievements have been in four areas:

1. It has trained a generation of first-rate scholars, now occupying key positions in Jewish Law research and instruction at universities all over the country.
2. Books and studies have been published in a wide variety of topics, on a high level of academic excellence. These publications have, among other things, made the literature and sources of Jewish Law more readily available to teachers, students and legal personnel. A monumental undertaking in this area is the responsa index project, aimed at indexing responsa literature in the period of the rishonim (i.e., prior to the fifteenth century).
3. The Institute publishes a Hebrew Annual of Jewish Law, Shenaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri, which is now firmly established as the premier publication in the field. The twenty-five volumes published hitherto present a diversity of studies by scholars of the first rank on classical and modern subjects of Jewish Law. Recently, the Institute was handed over the Jewish Law Annual (English), its future volumes will be published as a part of the Institute’s publications.
4. The Institute’s library owns a unique, rich and varied collection of volumes in all areas of Halakhic literature, Jewish Law research and related subjects, now considered the most important library of its kind in this country and indeed in the whole world. Its services are at the disposal of students, scholars and jurists.

Recently, the Institute was honored when the Emet Prize 2011 was awarded to two of the senior researchers of the Institute, Prof. Eliav Shochetman and Prof. Berachyahu Lifshitz.

The Institute of Jewish Law website

The Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Faculty of Law is the preeminent academic center in Israel devoted to human rights research and education. Engaging government, civil society and local and international academia, the Center serves as themost important hub in Israel for practical and theoretical discourse on current local and global human rights dilemmas. 

The Center provides outstanding Hebrew University students with unequaled academic and practical tools necessary for them to fulfill key roles in Israeli society as leaders in public service, as educators and researchers, and as pioneers of social change.

The Minerva Center for Human Rights places great emphasis on developing platforms for collaborations between Israeli students, scholars and practitioners and their international counterparts, in order to generate awareness of, and discourse with, comparative academic reflection, historical experience and cultural perspectives. Partners in recent Minerva projects have included Freie Universität Berlin and Göttingen University in Germany, George Washington University and Georgetown University in the United States, Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, University of Fribourg in Switzerland, McGill University in Canada, European University Institute, National University of Rwanda and others.

Each year the Center brings to Jerusalem dozens of leading international human rights scholars and practitioners to lecture at conferences and symposia or teach intensive courses. In addition, in recent years the Center has initiated projects in which Hebrew University students have participated in conferences, courses and study tours in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Rwanda, Canada and the United States.

The Center's activities include –

• A fully-funded multidisciplinary international PhD program in human rights with Freie Universität Berlin – the first-ever PhD program in human rights in Israel, and the first joint German-Israeli PhD program (in any field) ever funded by the German Research Foundation. 
• The only Postdoctoral Fellowships in Israel devoted to human rights research.
• The only research grants offered to all Israeli scholars engaged in human rights-related research, on a competitive basis, through an annual national call for proposals.
• TheIsrael Law Review, a leading international journal of human rights, international and public law (published by Cambridge University Press).
• Numerous international conferences, symposia, guest lectures and workshops each year, on a wide range of current local and global human rights issues.
• Academic courses, summer schools, internships and international study trips for top Hebrew University students.
• An ongoing, closed, structured consultation mechanism between government and civil society professionals on pressing domestic human rights dilemmas, under the Center's leadership and auspices.

Minerva Center for Human Rights Website

The Harry and Michael Sacher Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law was established in 1959. Its broad range of activities ever since has been supported by a generous donation from the Sacher Family. The Institute serves as a prominent research arm of the Faculty of Law, as well as a publishing house (the leading in Israel) for legal academic publications.

In its first years, the Institute assisted the Israeli Ministry of Justice and other official agencies in the preparation of legislative materials and by writing commentaries on proposed bills. Today the Institute engages with (and supports) legal research in a variety of fields, through the following means:

Books: The Institute has published hundreds of books and monographs, written mainly in Hebrew, by leading Israeli scholars in all areas of law. We continue to publish books on an ongoing basis, based on a peer-review process that ensures the highest academic level.

Conferences: The Institute organizes international and national conferences, in Israel and abroad, in cooperation with local and foreign research centers, and occasionally sponsors conferences organized by members of the Faculty.

Research Support: The Institute grants each year a post-doctoral fellowships that allows a junior researcher to develop his/her research under the auspices of the Institute, while engaging with Faculty members and becoming integrated in the rich academic activity of the Faculty. In addition, the Institute provides funding for research studies performed by Faculty members.

Journals: Three academic journals are published under the auspices of the Institute: “Misphatim”, the main publication of the Faculty, edited by its students; “Hukim”, a journal focusing on legislative proposals and commentaries; and “Israel Criminology”, the journal of the Israeli Association of Criminology. 

The Harry and Michael Sacher Institute website

The Aharon Barak Center for Interdisciplinary Legal Research facilitates, encourages, and coordinates cutting-edge interdisciplinary legal research by scholars from the Faculty of Law, other Hebrew University faculties, and from around the globe.



The Faculty of Law
Established in 1949 as the first law school in Israel, the Faculty of Law is the alma mater of the vast majority of Israeli Supreme Court justices, Israel’s most prominent legal scholars, senior government officials and legal practitioners. The Faculty of Law strives for excellence in research. Many faculty members hold graduate degrees from leading international universities and spend time teaching or conducting research abroad. Legal research at the Faculty has a theoretical and interdisciplinary focus, and scholarly work produced by members of the Faculty of Law figures prominently in leading legal journals.



Aharon Barak

Aharon Barak is the most prominent lawyer, legal scholar, and judge in Israel of his generation. A full professor at the Hebrew University at the age of 36, even prior to this Barak was already known as an international expert in civil law, chairing important international committees in this field. Barak was appointed as Attorney General of Israel at age 39, and three years later (in 1978) he was appointed to the Israeli Supreme Court. In 1995, he was nominated as the President of the Supreme Court of Israel and he served in this position until his retirement in 2006. Barak is considered to be one of the most brilliant and fruitful legal scholars of our time. As a Judge, Barak was the driving force behind the fundamental transformation of Israeli law throughout the last 30 years and the rise of the Supreme Court as an influential and central institution in the protection of democratic values in the Israeli polity. His decisions have shaped almost every field of law, and have had profound impact on the status of this court among the international legal community. While Barak began his career as an expert in civil and commercial law, as a judge he soon became the most influential figure on the bench in public and constitutional law. Subsequently, Barak became increasingly interested in international law and his rulings in this field are now studied by lawyers and scholars around the world. Throughout his career as a judge Barak did not cease his work as a legal scholar and published numerous books on legal interpretation and methodology—some of which have been translated to several languages.


Barak began his association with the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University as a law student in 1955, going on to become a faculty member and a Dean of the Faculty in 1974-1975. As an Attorney General and Justice of the Supreme Court, Barak continued to teach at the Faculty, and he regards the Faculty not only as his Alma Mater but also as his intellectual home. It was thus only natural that upon Barak's retirement from the bench, the Faculty decided to honor his commitment and devotion to the Hebrew University and his contributions to Israeli law and society through the establishment of the Aharon Barak Center for Interdisciplinary Legal Research.


For detailed CV, see here



The Aharon Barak Center for Interdisciplinary Legal Research

This Center seeks to honor and expand the legacy of Aharon Barak through excellence in interdisciplinary legal research. 

In today’s legal world, legal research is almost always intertwined with research in other disciplines such as economics, sociology and psychology; history, philosophy, and literature. Legal research today also entails collaboration between researchers (both lawyers and social scientists) from different legal and cultural systems. The Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University includes internationally renowned experts in such fields as economic analysis of law, law and criminology, philosophy of law, and behavioral legal studies. 

The Barak Center provides the institutional and organizational framework that enables the Hebrew University to operate in the competitive global environment of contemporary academia. It does so by providing research grants and support for research groups, conferences, and doctoral students who use interdisciplinary methodology for the study of law. The Center aims, in particular, to answer the growing need for competitive working conditions in Israeli academia for brilliant young legal academics who specialize in interdisciplinary research and to enable the Faculty to increase its participation and influence within the global legal-academic community.
 

Structure
The Barak Center is part of the Faculty of Law, and is operated according to Hebrew University regulations for research centers. Aharon Barak serves as the Center’s honorary President. The Academic Director of the Center is appointed from among members of the Faculty, and an Academic Committee sets Center goals and policies and supervises its activities and budgets. 

Professor Assaf Hamdani serves as the Center’s inaugural Academic Director. Professor Alon Harel is Chair of the Center’s Academic Committee. Other members of the Academic Committee include scholars who specialize in various aspects of interdisciplinary legal studies, from the Faculty of Law, the Institute of Criminology, the Center for the Study of Rationality, the School of Education, and the department of International Relations.

Activities
Research Grants: The Center offers research grants to encourage new and innovative interdisciplinary legal research.

Fellowships: The Center offers fellowships to LL.M. and Ph.D. students to encourage the use of interdisciplinary methodology in legal research. In addition, the Center offers postdoctoral fellowships and hosts postdoctoral scholars from abroad.

International Activities: The Center encourages international collaboration between Hebrew University faculty members and scholars from abroad by supporting international conferences.

Academic Publications: The Center supports the publication of books, journals and internet bulletins in relevant research areas. It also supports academic seminars, conferences and forums and, when appropriate, subsequently publishes the resulting collection of papers.

The Clinical Legal Education Center (CLEC) at the Hebrew University is an integral part of Israel’s foremost Faculty of Law and one of the country’s leading clinical centers. CLEC activities are based on a two-pronged approach which offers the highest quality legal aid to a wide range of disadvantaged individuals and groups while engaging law students in top-notch, hands-on clinical and practical experience. 

Law students experience practical legal work and attend forums and workshops that provide them with the legal tools essential for effectively performing their pro bono activities. Faculty members guide the students in their clinical work and help them to understand and gain insights on the social, cultural, and ethical dimensions of their future profession, while the students also benefit from interaction with professionals in other disciplines, including social work, business administration and disability studies. This high investment in our students has proven well worth it — indeed, as they pursue their professional careers, a majority of our students remain committed to, and aware of, social responsibility as an integral part of the legal profession.

The CLEC comprises 8 clinics: The Representation of Marginalized Groups Clinic; the Criminal Justice Clinic; the International Human Rights Clinic; the Rights of People with Disability Clinic; the Rights of Youth at Risk Clinic; the Economic Development of Women Clinic; the Innocence Project (wrongful convictions); and the Multiculturalism and Diversity Clinic.

The Clinical Legal Education Center website

The Federmann Cyber Security Center – Cyber Law Program brings together scholars, research fellows and doctoral students from the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Law and the Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering, in order to promote groundbreaking academic research in the field of information technology, law and criminology, which can cultivate collaboration between academia, industry and government. Specifically, the program studies, through using truly inter-disciplinary methods the prevention and regulation of cyber threats and related law enforcement challenges.

As cyberspace — the online world of computer networks and the internet — evolves, so too are associated aspects such as global connectivity, access to data, vulnerable technologies and anonymity, which facilitate the spread of disruptive cyber activities, which have the potential for causing significant damage, and put basic individual rights, such as privacy, under considerable pressure. This has led to a growing debate concerning the very nature of information technology and its influence on the development of new legal doctrine. Since law and law enforcement were primarily developed to resolve activities of a physical nature that occur within a specific territory, today’s transition to a cyberspace has created new challenges which need to be considered within novel parameters of space, reality and dynamics.

New doctrines are being researched in The Federmann Cyber Security Center – Cyber Law Program in several fields of study. For example in international law, issues pertaining to the law of war —devised to regulate wars between standing armies — now need to be extended to cover the uncharted territory of cyber warfare and internet terrorism. In the field of human rights too, concepts of privacy and freedom of expression must be reconceived to address surveillance and information dissemination activities in cyberspace for which there are no precedents, given the immense scope and reach of data flows. Likewise, in criminology, new models need to be developed to address the distinct features of cybercrimes, which differ vastly from traditional crimes, as well as the possibilities and risks of harnessing the internet to combat traditional crime. And in the field of intellectual property the new digital environment creates numerous new challenges in the areas of patent protection, knowhow copyrights and trademarks.

While the law has responded to the challenges arising from information technologies in some areas, in general it has failed to keep up with — and, moreover, preempt — the rapidly evolving developments in information technology. Clearly, there is an urgent need for a new and wholly comprehensive focus on conceptual and practical research. Since Israeli science in general, and computer scientists of the Hebrew University in particular, are longtime leaders in all aspects of internet security and robustness, it is only fitting that their colleagues in the field of law should assume a similar leadership role in the development of legal theory for the cyber era. Here too, the Faculty of Law's intellectual approach is interdisciplinary, with its participants coming from diverse fields such as international law, human rights, military law, intellectual property, and criminology, and interacting with computer science and other forms of scholarship.
 

The Federmann Cyber Security Center – Cyber Law Program Website 

Cyberlaw Program Workshop Schedule

The Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program 

Transitional Justice is a multidisciplinary field of contemporary research and practice. It is concerned with the study of processes that can enable societies that have suffered from widespread human rights violations (as a result of severe political and social disruption, armed conflict, military rule, authoritarian regimes, or even genocide) to transition successfully to sustainable conditions of peace, reconciliation, democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights. Such processes may include truth-seeking, acknowledgement, accountability, apologies, reparations, constitutional reform, community empowerment and redistribution of resources, among others.

The Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program was established by the Hebrew University's Minerva Center for Human Rights and Faculty of Law in 2011 as a long-term interdisciplinary program for research, education and outreach activities related to transitional justice. It is the first academic program in Israel devoted to the field. 

The Program draws on the rich comparative experience accrued in the field globally over the last several decades, and to the contribution of scholars, practitioners and institutions from other conflict/reconciliation settings around the world. However, whereas "classic" transitional justice theory and practice has focused on post-conflict transitions, the Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program also seeks to explore the field’s potential during the course of an active conflict and the contributions it can make to the processes leading to a political settlement – with particular focus on the Israeli-Palestinian context.

The Program includes both introductory transitional justice courses as part of the Hebrew University's Law Faculty undergraduate curriculum, and an English-language MA program in human rights and transitional justice at the Faculty of Law. It also offers unique student workshops and international study tours to regions of transition (such as Rwanda, Northern Ireland and Cyprus); conferences, symposia and workshops with leading international and local scholars and civil society and government practitioners; and scholarships for minority students. 

Through the Clinical Legal Education Center, the Program operates two projects focused on East Jerusalem that involve dealing with historical injustices: The Legal Status Project and the Criminal Justice Project. In the Legal Status Project, the International Human Rights Clinic represents Palestinians, mostly from East Jerusalem, who face various challenges related to their official status in Israel due to the peculiar history of the area. These include registration of children at the Ministry of Interior, family reunification, citizenship status and residency status. The precariousness of official status has a dramatic impact on all aspects of life for Palestinians, from the basic right to live as a family, through democratic representation, to social rights. 

As part of the Criminal Justice Project, the Multiculturalism and Diversity Clinic will concentrate on legal issues related to structural and conflict-related discrimination of Palestinians in East Jerusalem across the public service sector and with regard to official/government attitudes relating to their precarious status in the City. These include erasing the criminal records of minors from marginalized groups in East Jerusalem who have a criminal record even though they were never indicted. The Clinic also plans to update a 2017 memo on profiling, which served as a useful point of reference in policy discussions for multiple advocacy groups in Israel, to include new legal, technological and policy developments in Israel, other countries and international law. Finally, the Clinic plans to address the adverse impact of the serious shortage of parole officers in East Jerusalem, including significant delays in processes such as the release of detained Palestinian criminal suspects, sentencing practices, and early release from incarceration. The Clinic plans to employ a host of social-change tools, including awareness raising, direct appeals and legal challenges, in order to ensure that the relevant governmental authorities address this shortage. 

The Clinical Legal Education Center will establish in the academic year 2021-2022 a field center in the city of Lod, in order to address, through the handling of individual cases, problems arising from the long-standing divisions between the different communities in Lod, including issues of group identity, coexistence, and historical injustice, and through legal channels promote a better, more just future. This project will be carried out in collaboration with two local organizations (“Naam” and “Citizens Build a Community”), through two clinics of the center - the Clinic for Multiculturalism and Diversity and the International Human Rights Clinic, tackling issues such as residency, citizenship, discrimination in allocation of municipal resources and access to education.

The Program benefits from the generous support of the Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Initiative, and from the guidance of an International Advisory Board of leading scholars and practitioners in the field. 

The Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program in the Clinical Legal Education Center

The Transitional Justice Program in the Minerva Center

The MA program in transitional justice

The transitional justice initiative by the Fried-Gal Foundation