People
Members
Prof. Oren Perez
Prof. Oren Perez
Oren Perez has an LLB (Magna Cum Laude) from Tel Aviv University and LL.M. (1997), Ph.D. (2001) from London School of Economics and Political Science. He also has a BA in Philosophy, University of London, 2015. He currently serves as Dean of Bar-Ilan University, Faculty of Law. He primarily works in the fields of Environmental Regulation, Networks and Law, Transnational Law, Legal Theory and E-democracy. He has won several prestigious grants including a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Scholarship (Chevening Scholarship) and a Marie Curie Fellowship (during his studies at LSE) and various research grants, including grants from the Israeli Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Science and the Israel Science Foundation. He established the Bar-Ilan Environmental Regulation Clinic on 2003 and still serves as its Academic Director. He is also the head of the new MA program on Environmental Regulation and Policy (a joint program with BIU Geography and Environment Dep.). In the field of law and data-science his work focuses on the application of network theory to the study of legal problems, especially in the context of global governance and regulation research and on the analysis of AI and platform law.
Dr. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov
Dr Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at Bar Ilan University Faculty of Law; Head of BIU Lab for Law, Data-Science and Digital Ethics; member of the Executive Board of Bar Ilan University’s Data-Science Institute; and Senior Fellow in the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Digital Governance (DIGOV). He is also co-director of the dual degree program in law and political science; General Editor of the international journal The Theory and Practice of Legislation, and founding Co-Chair of the Israeli Association of Legislation.
Before joining Bar Ilan, he was an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School in New York. He has previously served as a senior law clerk for Justice Dorit Beinisch at the Supreme Court of Israel, and as research assistant to Professor Menahem Elon, former deputy Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel. Dr. Bar-Siman-Tov obtained his J.S.D. and LL.M. from Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar, Fulbright Scholar, Fischman Scholar, and Morris Fellow. He received his LL.B., magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Dr. Bar-Siman-Tov’s research interests include legislation and regulation, constitutional law, and the interactions between law and big data/ data science. His scholarship has been published, inter alia, in the Georgetown Law Journal, Boston University Law Review, American Journal of Comparative Law and Regulation and Governance. His scholarship received multiple awards (including, inter alia, the Giandomenico Majone Prize, awarded by the European Consortium for Political Research’s Standing Group on Regulatory Governance; the Gorney Prize for Outstanding Research in Public Law, awarded by the Israeli Association of Public Law; and the Cheshin Prize for Academic Excellence in Law) and research grants (including, inter alia, from Volkswagen Foundation; the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development; the Israel Science Foundation; the Ministry of Science and Technology; and the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research). Dr. Bar-Siman-Tov was also named one of the Most Inspiring Professors in Israel by The National Union of Israeli Students, and was awarded the University Award for Excellence in Teaching
Dr. Ayelet Sela
Ayelet Sela is a lecturer (assistant professor) at the faculty of law, and a member of the BIU LawData Lab and the BIU Data-Science Institute. Dr. Sela’s scholarship and teaching revolve around law and technology, dispute system design, courts, and empirical legal studies. Her recent work focuses on choice architecture, procedural design and access to justice in courts, online courts and online legal services. She also works on the application of machine learning methods to legal data for analytical purposes and in order to develop decision-support tools and governance mechanisms. Dr. Sela is the recipient of multiple research grants and academic awards, and her work has been published in leading journals. She holds a JSD and JSM from Stanford Law School, where she was also a fellow in the Gould Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Center and the Codex Center for Legal Informatics. She earned an LL.B and “Amirim” Honors Program diploma from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and clerked for the Honorable Justice Eliezer Rivlin in the Israeli Supreme Court.
Prof. Miriam Marcowitz-Bitton
Prof. Miriam Marcowitz-Bitton is a law professor at Bar-Ilan University School of Law in Israel. She received her Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws degrees at Bar-Ilan University School of Law, as well as another Master of Laws and a Doctor of the Science of Law at the University of Michigan School of Law. A former Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at DePaul University College of Law, Miami University School of Law, and Ohio State University School of Law, she was also the Microsoft Research Fellow at U.C. Berkeley School of Law and a Visiting Fellow at George Washington University Law School. Prof. Bitton writes and teaches in the fields of intellectual property law, law and technology, and property. Her articles are published in major journals in Israel, the U.S. and Europe. She is the winner of the prestigious Alon Fellowship for the years 2009-2011 (granted by the Council of Higher Education in Israel to promising junior faculty members in Israel), the 100,000 EUROs Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant (granted by the European Union Commission), and the Zeltner Award for Junior Legal Scholars granted annually to one junior promising legal scholar in Israel by the Rotary Foundation and Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law (2013). Prof. Bitton’s current research agenda is focused on Israeli and American patent law and criminal enforcement of intellectual property law.
Affiliated Faculty
Prof. Adi Ayal
Adi Ayal holds a PhD in Economics (UC Berkeley) and a PhD in Law (Bar Ilan, with highest distinction), and is a professor at Bar Ilan University in Israel. He specializes in corporate and competition law, as well as applications of game theory to business and legal planning.Professor Ayal held research and teaching positions at several universities, including the London School of Economics, University of Chicago, Monash, and UC Berkeley. He regularly teaches professional education seminars for lawyers and judges. His book, Fairness in Antitrust: Protecting the Strong from the Weak was published in 2014, by Hart Publishing, Oxford.Professor Ayal often serves as an economic consultant and court-appointed expert. He recently headed a public commission investigating the market for television productions, submitting recommendations to the Prime Minister and Minister of Communications.
Prof. Michal Alberstein
Michal Alberstein, SJD Harvard University; LLB, BA, Tel-Aviv University; is a professor at The Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. She is also the Primary Investigator on an ERC consolidator grant to study Judicial Conflict Resolution (JCR), and the co-editor of The International Journal of Conflict Engagement and Resolution. (IJCER).She is the sexual harassment commissioner of Bar Ilan University and the academic chair of “Israeli hope” project, supported by the president of Israel and High Council od Eduction. She teaches jurisprudence and conflict resolution. Her current research deals with theories of law and conflict resolution and their intellectual roots; multiculturalism and its relation to negotiation and mediation; representations of conflict resolution in literature and film; trauma and memory: medical, legal and cultural perspectives, judicial work of settlement and conflict resolution. She is the author and co-editor of numerous books and articles in English and Hebrew, including the following books: Pragmatism and Law: From Philosophy to Disputes Resolution (UK 2002); Trauma and Memory: Reading, Healing and Making Law (Stanford University Press, 2007);Jurisprudence of Mediation (Magnes 2007, in Hebrew); Alterative Justice: Mediating, Restoring and Healing through Legal Institutions (2014, in Hebrew); Trauma’s Omen: Israeli Readings in Identity, Memory and Representation (2016).
Dr. Yotam Kaplan
Yotam Kaplan is an assistant professor at Bar-Ilan University Law School. Dr. Kaplan researches private law theory, focusing on remedies and the law of unjust enrichment. He is twice recipient of the Bar-Ilan Law Student Counsel Prize for best lecturer, and was awarded the Chesin Prize for Academic Excellence in the Field of Law, and the Bar-Ilan University award for excellence in teaching. Dr. Kaplan earned his doctoral degree at Harvard Law School, where he was a fellow of the Project on the Foundations of Private Law, won the Addison-Brown Writing Prize, and was awarded the Dean Scholar Award for his LL.M. thesis, and the Harold Perlman Foundation Scholarship. Before pursuing his doctoral degree, Dr. Kaplan clerked for Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch of the Supreme Court of Israel and worked in private practice as a commercial lawyer.
Prof. Yuval Feldman
Yuval Feldman is The Mori Lazarof professor of legal research at Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law. He obtained his Ph.D. ( Jurisprudence and Social Policy) from the UC Berkeley in 2004 after receiving his L.L.B. and B.A (Psychology) from Bar-Ilan University.He teaches Employment Law, Law and Psychology, Law and Behavioral Economics and Empirical Legal Methods. His areas of research include Behavioral Analysis of Law, Experimental Law and Economics, Ethical Decision-Making, Regulatory Impact and Social Norms, Compliance, Formal and Non-Formal Enforcement Strategies.From 2011 to 2013, he was a fellow in the Edmond J. Safra Institutional Corruption Lab at Harvard Law School and the Implicit Social Cognition Lab in Harvard Psychology. In 2013 Professor Feldman has been a visiting professor at University of Torino. Since 2014 He is a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, advising various governmental bodies on behavioral informed policies in areas related to corruption, regulatory design and enforcement.In 2016 he was elected to Israel’s Young Academy. Feldman has received various national fellowships and awards including Rothschild, Fulbright, Alon, Olin, and Zeltner ( 2008 Young) Chesin ( 2019 Senior researcher) and Bruno (2019-2020) as well as more than 20 competitive research grants. He has co-authored more than 50 papers in peer reviewed journals such as the J. of Empirical Legal Studies (X 6), Law & Society Review, Psychology, Public Policy & Law, J. of Institutional & Theoretical Economics, J. Law & Contemporary Problems, Behavioral Science & Policy , J. of Business Ethics and Regulation & Governance as well as law reviews such as NYU Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, The Georgetown Law Journal, Texas Law Review and Cardozo Law Review. He is on the editorial board of Regulation and Governance, Law & policy and European Journal of Law and Economics and among the founders of ComplianceNet. His book: The Law of Good People was published in Cambridge University Press in June 2018.
Data Scientists
Dr. Oren Glickman
Scientific Manager, Data Science Institute.
Dr. Inbal Yahav-Shenberger
The interface between data mining and operations research. In my research work, I combine techniques from these two fields to achieve improved algorithms. I apply the methods mainly to health care applications and online auctions.
Prof. David Sarne
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University. I am also the head of the Intelligent Information Agents (IIA) group. I joined Bar-Ilan in Oct. 2007; before this I was a Post-Doc at Harvard University for two years, following several years in the Israeli hi-tech industry. I hold a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and an M.Sc. in Information Systems (both from Tel-Aviv University) and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Bar-Ilan University.
Dr. Jonathan Schler
dr. jonathan schler
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Dr. Ohad Somech
Ohad Somech is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the BIU LawData lab, where he researches the relation between AI and social norms. Ohad’s research interests include emerging technologies, regulation of markets and digital platforms, as well as private law and theory. Ohad completed his LL.B. (with honors) and his B.A. in psychology at the Tel-Aviv University, where he also wrote his Ph.D. dissertation, entitled “Contractual Regret: A Psychological Perspective,” under the supervision of Prof. Nili Cohen and Prof. Roy Kreitner. Ohad completed his LL.M. studies (first in class) at the universities of Bologna and Hamburg as part of the European Program for Law and Economics (EMLE). He was awarded a scholarship from the Bucerius Institute. Upon completing his Ph.D. studies, Ohad was a post-doctoral student at the Sciences-Po Law School and later at Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Tel Aviv University
Graduate Students
Bar Fargon Mizrahi
Bar Fargon Mizrahi is a Ph.D. student at Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law under the supervision of Dr. Ittai Bar Siman Tov and Dr. Ayelet Sela. Her research discusses the development of tools for dealing with violations of individual rights due to technological developments with test cases such as mobile apps. Bar is also a Research Fellow at the BIU Innovation Lab for Law, Data-Science and Digital Ethics at Bar-Ilan. She has an LL.B and LL.M. from Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law, Summa Cum Laude. During her studies, Bar worked as a research assistant and teaching assistant for multiple researchers. Bar also brings with her important relevant practical experience, as Legal Counsel at Excellence Investments Group, Bar was in charge, inter alia, of implementing privacy protection laws, building databases for the entire group (10 subsidiaries), and handling ethical issues.
Bar's first manuscript “Risky Fine Print: A Novel Typology of Ethical-Risks in Mobile App User Agreements” was published in the Villanova Law Review. Her article won the support of various research grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant No.3-15723), the Israel Council for Higher Education and the Data-Science Institute at Bar-Ilan University. Bar was invited to lecture on her research at the Machine Lawyering’s 2021 Conference, “Human Sovereignty and Machine Efficiency in the Law” and was awarded a best paper prize.
Einav Tamir
Einav Tamir is a Ph.D. student at Bar Ilan University Law School, under the supervision of Prof. Oren Perez and Dr. Yotam Kaplan. Einav's research focuses on consumer empowerment and on its possible ethical impact on hybrid market regulation.
Einav holds an LL.B. (Magna Cum Laude) from Bar Ilan University (2016) and an M.Sc. in Regulation of Utilities from London School of Economics and Political Science, focusing on e-Commerce and Cyberlaw (2017). Einav's final M.Sc. essays in LSE were on Non-Transferability of Digital Assets from Users' Post-Mortem Perspective: The Rights Kind of Wrong? and Enhancing Trust in E-Commerce: Informing Consumers by the Modalities of 'Code' and of 'Law'. Both essays marked with distinction.
Prior to her Ph.D., Einav served as a teaching assistant for Contract Law in Bar Ilan University and Netanya Academic College, and was part of the founding team of the Hebrew Research Network (HRN) of SSRN. During her studies in Bar Ilan, she was a research assistant in several projects including Transnational Regulation, E-Democracy, Behavioral Analysis of the Law, Empirical Legal Studies and Civil Procedure.
Elhanan Schwartz
Elhanan Schwartz is a doctoral student in the Bar Ilan Law Faculty under the supervision of Dr. Ittai-Bar-Siman-Tov His research focuses on data science applications to improve legislation quality. In parallel with his theoretical work, Elhanan is leading the Israel legislation digitization project on behalf of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. That is a wide-range government project which aims to convert all legislation and regulation in Israel into a machine-readable digital format and to develop advanced tools for digital representation of the law. Elhanan holds MBA from Bar-Ilan University.
Keren Horowitz
Keren Horowitz is a Ph.D. Candidate at the faculty of law, Bar Ilan University. Her dissertation, titled “The Knesset Legal Advisor, Primary or Secondary Actor in Legislation Process in Knesset Committees? Mixed Method Empirical Research Using Data Science Tools“ is being written under the supervision of Dr. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov.Keren is the CEO of the Rackman Center for the advancement of the status of women in the law faculty. Keren served as the Head of the Rackman Advocacy and Legislation Unit from 2014 to 2018. Before entering the legal field, Keren worked as a software engineer in several start-ups and in Cisco systems LTD.Keren earned her LL.B. from Tel Aviv University and her B.Sc & M.Sc. In computer science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her thesis title was “Distributed lookup in dynamic peer to peer network” under the supervision of Dr. Dahlia Malki.
Nurit Wimer
Nurit is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University, under the supervision of Prof. Oren Perez. Nurit earned her LL.B. and LL.M. from Bar Ilan University, with honors, in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Nurit is a member of the Israeli Bar, and served as a lawyer in the area of regulation and administrative law in one of the elite Israeli firms as part of the Regulatory and Governmental practice group.
During her LL.B. studies, Nurit was a member of the Faculty of Law's Excellence Program at Bar-Ilan University. In addition, Nurit served as a research assistant to Prof. Adi Ayal, Prof. Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg in her joint research with Dr. Anat Peleg and Prof. Ariel Bendor, Dr. Manal Totry-Jubran; and Prof. Gideon Sapir.
Nurit's doctoral dissertation is focused on meta-regulatory issues (i.e. the practice of governing, monitoring, controlling and supervising the regulatory process itself). Her research deal with issues in the field of developing methods for regulatory impact assessments and designing regulatory policies. Another aspect of the research concentrates in algorithmic regulation, which refers to standard-setting, monitoring and behavior modification by means of computational algorithms.
Ofir Stegmann
Ofir Stegmann is a Ph.D. student at Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law and a member of the BIU LawData Lab. His doctoral dissertation, "Regulatory Networks: Empirical Network Analysis of CSR International Organizations and the Israeli Legislators and Parties" (advisors: Prof. Oren Perez & Prof. Reuven Cohen), integrates regulatory questions with network science and big-data programming implementations. During his doctoral studies, Ofir was awarded by the President of Israel, Bar-Ilan President and Bar-Ilan Rector, and assists\ed in courses on data science, networks, text analysis and international economic law. He has a LL.B. (Summa Cum Laude) from Bar-Ilan University and clerked for Adv. Eli Zohar, the chairman of Goldfarb-Seligman law firm.
Sharon Avigad
Sharon Avigad has been a lawyer for 23 years and holds LL.B. and LL.M. degrees with honors from the Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Law at Bar-Ilan University. Sharon has been specializing in administrative law and has been involved in auditing for about 15 years. During these years she has published audit reports on various government institutions. Her research, under the supervision of Professor Ariel Bendor, examines the changes in terminology that have occurred in Supreme Court rulings over the years, and specifically asks whether the court has adopted a more activist approach. The innovation in the study is the emphasis it puts on quantitative data. To this end, Sharon has used a methodology of machine-learning and statistical tools to analyze the results.
Hadas Tamam Ben Avraham
Hadas Tamam Ben Avraham is a Ph.D. Student in the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University under the supervision of Prof. Yuval Feldman. Her research discusses the decision-making procedures of state representatives in criminal law. Hadas holds an LL.B. at law, BA and MBA in Business Administration from the Faculty of Business Administration at the Ono Academic Campus, Cum Lauda. Hadas serves as Vice Dean for Regulation and Strategic Planning at Faculty of Business Administration and School of Computer Science & Information Systems and as chair of the Institute for Cyber Risk Management at Ono Academic College. Hadas has been working in the field of cyber protection in recent years and has been on the team that led the management of the most major crises in Israel and abroad in the past year. Hadas's first manuscript "Re-examination of Decision-Making Processes in Closing a Criminal Record: From the Perspective of Behavioral Economics and Behavioral Ethics" won a grant from the Sacher Institute, The Hebrew University. Hadas also won a grant Horizon 2020 "Trust Grant" (Lead Beneficiary). Hadas was previously a prosecutor in the Lahav 433 unit of the police.
Daniel Shtauber
Daniel Shtauber is a Ph.D. student (Direct Track) at Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law under the supervision of Dr. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, and he is a full-time researcher after winning the President’s Scholarship for his doctoral studies (2019). His research discusses the The Involvement of the Government's Legal Counsels in the legislative process. Daniel interested in Legislative Law; Public Law, inter alia Constitutional Law and Administrative Law; Regulation; and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Daniel's research combines quantitative and qualitative methods, including aspects of qualitative text analysis and machine learning. In this research framework, Daniel is a member of a research group that develops a legal Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Hebrew, by analyzing legal texts in a qualitative way. Daniel earned his LL.B (Summa Cum Laude) from Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law (2017), and interned as a law clerk for Justice Yosef Elron at the Supreme Court of Israel, and at the Public Law Division in the Counseling and Legislation Department. In addition, Daniel serves as a teaching and research assistant for Legislation Law and Administrative Law in Bar-Ilan and Tel-Aviv Universities, and he also Coordinates the activities of both, the Clinic of Counseling and Legislation and the legislative procedure workshop in the Knesset of Bar-Ilan University, under the supervision of Dr. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov.