Shai Lavi is a Professor of Law and heads the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. He is also the co-director of the Minerva Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of End of Life, and until 2017 was also the founding director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics – both at Tel Aviv University.
He received his Ph.D. from the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, University of California Berkeley. His book The Modern Art of Dying: A History of Euthanasia in the United States (Princeton University Press) won the 2006 Distinguished Book Award in sociology of law from the American Sociological Association. He was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Berkeley, California, a visiting professor at Toronto University and at Cardozo Law School, and a Humboldt fellow at the Dubnow Instittue for Jewish History and Culture in Leipzig and at the faculty of law at the Humboldt University, Berlin. He is currently working on medical authority over the body in Germany, Turkey, and Israel. He is a member of the National Bioethics Council. He is also a member on several editorial boards including Law, Culture and Humanities Journal and Critical Analysis of Law.
