Shai Lavi

Shai Lavi is the director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and professor of law at Tel Aviv University, specializing in the sociology of law and legal theory. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in law and sociology from Tel Aviv University and completed his doctorate in law at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on bioethical issues, particularly the use of technology at the beginning and end of life, as well as the legal regulation of the body and the tension between religion and secularity in Germany, Turkey, and Israel. Lavi’s book The Modern Art of Dying: A History of Euthanasia in the United States won the 2006 Sociology of Law Distinguished Scholarly Book Award from the American Sociological Association. He has received numerous accolades, including a Fulbright Fellowship, the Zeltner Prize for young scholars in law, and research grants from the German-Israeli Foundation and the Minerva Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the End of Life.