David Kretzmer

David Kretzmer

David Kretzer, LL.B, LL.M (Jerusalem), Dr. Jur. (York, Canada), Dr. Jur. h.c. (Potsdam), is Professor Emeritus of International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia University, Tulane University, University of Southern California and the Fletcher School of Tufts University. From 2006-2009 he was a professor of law at the University of Ulster and until 2019 he was a professor of law at Sapir College, Sderot. In 2009/10 he was an Inaugural Fellow at the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice at NYU School of Law.

From 1995-2002 David was a member of the Human Rights Committee that monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, serving as vice-chairperson of the Committee in 2001 and 2002. He is an honorary Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists.

In 1993 David founded the Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University and served as its first academic director. In 1997-2000 he headed the Minerva Center for Human Rights of the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University.

David's main fields of research are constitutional law, human rights and international humanitarian law. His books include The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories (SUNY Press, 2002); The Concept of Human Dignity in Human Rights Discourse (edited together with E. Klein) (Kluwer International, 2002) and The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel (2nd edition in Arabic, 2002). A second, expanded, edition of The Occupation of Justice (written together with Yäel Ronen) was published by OUP in February 2021.

Besides his academic work David has been active in NGO work and has appeared before the Israel Supreme Court in human rights cases. He was a founding member of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and served as chair of its board. He was also a member and chair of the Board of B’Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.