Professor Anat Scolnicov

Biography

Professor Anat Scolnicov studied law at the Hebrew University (LLB), at Harvard Law School (LLM), where she held a Fulbright scholarship, and the London School of Economics (PhD) and is a member of the Israel Bar. Her book Religious freedom in international law: Between group rights and individual right (Routledge, 2011) examined tensions in protection of the right to religious freedom between groups and individuals, including the tripartite relationship between communities, families within those communities, and children within the family.

She was Deputy Director of the Centre for Public Law, Cambridge University the Director of Studies in Law and College Lecturer in Law at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University. She has lectured on international human rights law (including children’s rights) and taught public law and international law. Since 2013, she is Professor of Law at Winchester University, teaching public law, comparative public law, human rights, legal philosophy and current legislative problems.

Before joining academia, Anat was an attorney for Association for Civil Rights in Israel, litigating, on behalf of ACRI, civil rights and constitutional Supreme Court cases, working on civil rights legislation with a specialisation in freedom of speech, freedom of information, privacy and freedom of religion and conscience. Anat has advised many NGOs on religious freedom; she participated in a UN expert group on the rights of religious minorities.

Her work (on copyright and free speech, rights in criminal procedure, freedom of religion and equality) has been cited four times by the Supreme Court of Israel. Her work on international children’s rights has been cited by the European Court of Human Rights in App. no. 54032/18 T.C. v. Italy. In REF 2021

Her research, aside from that on religious freedom, concerns rights in the private sphere (in her co-edited book, Boundaries of State, Boundaries of Rights, Cambridge University Press), and human rights of corporations (published in the European Human Rights Law Review).
Her work on international children’s rights includes ‘The Child’s Right to Religious Freedom and Formation of Identity’, (2007) 15 International Journal of Children’s Rights, p. 251, reprinted in J. Eekelaar, Family rights and religion (2016), and ‘A question of faith’ (2010) 69 Cambridge Law Journal, p. 220, and was cited by the Supreme Court of Israel in HCJ 7426/08 Tabka v. Minister of Education.
Her current research is on the transplantation, adoption, migration and diffusion of constitutional ideas (to be included also in her forthcoming edited book for Hart Publishing).

She has a separate research interest in criminal law theory and its relationship to political theory and public law. She has examined in this light the offence of treason and the social contract as a basis for the criminal law. She was a visiting professor at Madrid Completense University.

In 2019, she convened and chaired Research Group of international academics at the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem of the Research Group ‘Constitutional Transplantations’. https://iias.huji.ac.il/people/anat-scolnicov

She is Co-Convenor of the Centre for Parliament and Public Law.

Areas of expertise

• Law, State and Religion
• Feminist Legal Theory
• Public law and International Law

Publications

Books

• Boundaries of State, Boundaries of Rights: The state, human rights, positive obligations and private parties (ed. with T. Kahana), 2016. Cambridge University Press.
• The Right to Religious Freedom in International Law: Between Group Right and Individual Right" (Routledge, 2012)

Chapters

• 'Beccaria, treason and the social contract', in du Bois-Pedain A. and Eldar, S., Re-reading Beccaria, (Hart Publishing 2022)
• 'Human rights and derivative rights the European Convention of Human Rights and the Rights of Corporations' in Boundaries of State, Boundaries of Rights: the state, human rights, positive obligations and private parties (Cambridge University Press 2016, ed. with T. Kahana)
• 'Introduction' in Boundaries of State, Boundaries of Rights: the state, human rights, positive obligations and private parties (Cambridge University Press 2016, with T. Kahana)
• 'Does constitutionalisation lead to secularization?', in: I. Katznelson and G. Stedman-Jones (eds), Religion and the political imagination (Cambridge University Press 2010), pp 295-313.
• 'Multi-religious Societies and State Legal Systems: Religious Marriages, the State and Implications for Human Rights" in T. Wilhelmsson, E. Paunio and A. Pohjolainen (Eds), Private Law and the many cultures of Europe (Kluwer Law International, 2007), pp 405-416.

Journal articles

• 'Lifeless and Lifelike in Law', European Human Rights Law Review, (2022).
• 'On a wing and a prayer', Oxford Journal of Law and Religion (June 2015).
• 'A question of faith' (2010) 69 Cambridge Law Journal, 220-23 (cited by the Supreme Court of Israel in HCJ 7426/08 Tabka v. Minister of Education [31/08/10]).
• 'Religious Freedom and Women's Rights: A Legal Solution to a Human Rights Conflict?' (2007) Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 25, 569-98. (reprinted: 13 Kurdish Human Rights Law Review)
• 'Religious Law, Religious Courts and Human Rights within Israeli Constitutional Structure' (2006) International Journal of Constitutional Law 4, pp. 732-40.
• 'The Child's Right to Religious Freedom and Formation of Identity', (2007) International Journal of Children's Rights 15, 251-67.
• 'Supersized Speech McLibel comes to Strasbourg', (2005) Cambridge Law Journal 64, 311-14.
• 'A dedicated follower of (religious) fashion', (2005) Cambridge Law Journal 64, 527-29.
• 'Miscarriage of Justice in the Criminal Process: Section 215 of the Criminal Procedure Law 1982', (2002) Alei Mishpat 2, 65-92 (in Hebrew).
• 'Satire and Parody in Copyright Law', (2000) Hamishpat, College of Management Law Review (in Hebrew).
• 'On the Relevance of Relevance to the Theory of Legal Factfinding', (2000) Israel Law Review 34, 260-301.
• 'Lifelike and lifeless in law: Do corporations have human rights?' (on SSRN)

Other

• Proposed override law puts human rights in peril, opinion piece on proposed 'override law' in Israel's Basic Law, on Ynet News, Oct. 2022

Conferences

Recent conference presentations

• 'Fertile soil? - Rationality, legitimacy and constitutional transplantations'. International conference on Constitutional Culture, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, co-sponsored by the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University, October 2-3, 2015.