David Fox

The Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the oldest law school in Israel. Established in 1949, the Faculty is the alma mater of almost all the Justices on the Supreme Court of Israel, and among its alumni are many of Israel's most prominent legal academics, Attorneys-General, senior government officials and representatives and practicing lawyers. Initially housed in the buildings of the Ratisbonne Monasteryin the center of Jerusalem, the Law Faculty was one of the first academic units to be relocated after the Six Day War in the historic buildings of the Hebrew University campus on MountScopus. This complex, including the original building of Israel's National Library has served as the home of the Faculty ever since. The Faculty's Bernard G. Segal Law Library is the largest law library in Israel containing some 300,000 volumes (80,000 titles) and holds several unique collections of Jewish, Israeli, Roman law and the philosophy of law. Today, the Faculty is composed of 40 full-time professors, 150 adjunct professors and over 50 instructors. The Faculty also welcomes a significant number of Visiting Professors and scholars from abroad who spend time at the HebrewUniversity teaching and carrying out research. The result is a dynamic curriculum spanning all the major areas of law, offering our students a broad variety of law-related and interdisciplinary subjects. The Faculty admits some 250 LL.B. students each year (for a four year program) and 100 students studying towards the LL.M. degree. In addition to these, about 60 graduate students are working on Ph.D. degrees under the supervision of Faculty members and over 200 students are working towards M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in the Institute of Criminology. The Faculty encourages its students to broaden their formal legal education by taking joint degrees, interdisciplinary courses and practical courses in clinics offering services to disadvantaged communities in Jerusalem. In addition we encourage our students to conduct part of their legal education abroad and have numerous programs for international collaboration and student-exchanges with law schools around the globe. The Faculty of Law strives for excellence in research at an international level. Many of our Faculty members have advanced degrees from leading foreign Universities and all spend time teaching or conducting research abroad. Research at the HebrewUniversity has a theoretical and interdisciplinary focus, and scholarly work produced by our Faculty figures prominently in leading legal journals and publishing houses. Members of the Faculty are actively involved broader university interdisciplinary centers such as the Center for the Study of Rationality and the European Forum. The Faculty itself has also established a variety of legal and interdisciplinary research forums: the Forum for Law and Economics, the Forum for Law and Philosophy, the International Law Forum, the Institute for Jewish Law, the Minerva Center for Human Rights and the Intellectual Property Law Forum. The Faculty of Law is also the home of the HebrewUniversity’s Institute of Criminology and the fruitful collaboration of lawyers and criminologists is reflected, among other things, in the Jerusalem Criminal Justice Study Group (CrimeGroup). The Harry and Michael Sacher Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law provides research grants and fellowships for research students and serves as the leading legal publishing house in Israel. The Institute also supports the two law reviews published by the Faculty: Mishpatim, a student-edited law journal in Hebrew, and the Israel Law Review, edited by members of Faculty and published in English.