Israeli law professor, Dr. Ruth Gavison, awared Israel Prize in Legal Research

Professor Ruth Gavison was recently awarded the Israel Prize in Legal Research for 2011.  Gavison, 66, is a law professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Israel Democracy Institute.  In 1997, she was awarded the Zeltner Prize for Legal Research.  Listen to her podcast here.

JewishJournal.com Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman profiled Gavison last May.

You’d have to describe Ruth Gavison as feisty, because the English language has no other way to describe a fearless, brilliant, energetic gray-haired, 65-year-old woman, other than to liken her to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Like Ginsburg, Gavison is one of her country’s preeminent legal thinkers. A law professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who’s done stints at Yale and Oxford, she was a founding member of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). In 2005, she was nominated to serve on Israel’s Supreme Court, but her appointment was blocked for political reasons. Gavison instead turned her energy to founding Metzilah — a center for Zionist, Jewish, humanist and liberal thought.

Read more.