Professor Yuval Shany
About
Professor Yuval Shany is an inaugural Accelerator Fellow at the Ethics in AI Institute at the University of Oxford.
He is the Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in International Law and former Dean of the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Professor Shany also serves as a Senior Research Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, and a Visiting Professor in the Center for Transnational Legal Studies (CTLS) at King’s College, London and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
He was a member of the UN Human Rights Committee between 2013-2020 (chairing the Committee between 2018-2019).
His current research focuses on international human rights law and new technology and he leads a European Research Council group of researchers investigating the three generation of digital human rights (3GDR).
Professor Shany was an honorary fellow of the Senior Common Room at Magdalen College (2023-2024).
Expertise
- International human rights law
- Digital human rights
- AI and human rights
- Public international law
- International law in cyberspace
- International courts and tribunals
Selected publications
- Autonomous weapons and the significance of choosing not to use force (2025)
- How Far Can you Go? Shoehorning Digital Human Rights into Existing Human Rights Treaties (2025)
- Programmed to Obey: The Limits of Law and the Debate over Meaningful Human Control of Autonomous Weapons (2025)
- A Right to a Human-to-Human Interaction (2024)
- The 2024 AU Common Position on the Application of International Law in the Cyberspace: Some Implications for the Development of Digital Human Rights
- Big-Tech Companies’ Obligations Under International Human Rights Law (2024)
- The Case for a New Right to a Human Decision Under International Human Rights Law (2023)
- From digital rights to international human rights: The emerging right to a human decision maker (2023)
Media experience
Professor Yuval Shany has extensive experience working with printed press on stories relating to international law, especially in connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and on Israeli constitutional law issues. He has given a number of online interview for UK, US, German and Israeli television and radio.
Recent media work
- Israeli Soldiers on Vacation Are Being Investigated for War Crimes in Gaza (The New York Times, 2025)
- Top UN court to hold hearings on legality of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian-claimed lands (EL PAÍS, 2024)
- UK drops planned Israel arrest warrant challenge (BBC News, 2024)
- Can the ICC arrest Israeli and Hamas leaders for war crimes? Legal experts weigh in (PBS News, 2024)
- ICC arrest warrants may haunt Netanyahu, Gallant for life - expert (The Jerusalem Post, 2024)
- The ICJ’s vague demands for Israel to comply with the law are unlikely to result in palpable change (The Guardian, 2024)
- U.N. Court Orders Russia To Halt Its Invasion Of Ukraine, In A Largely Symbolic Ruling (Washington Post, 2022)
- How Trump’s Middle East plan would violate international law (Al Jazeera, 2020)