Pnina Lahav
Professor of Law Emeritus
During the course of her legal career, Pnina Lahav has published nearly 50 journal articles and three books, including the critically acclaimed Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century. Winner of Israel’s Seltner Award (1998) and the Gratz College Centennial Book Award (1998), she is presently completing a biography of Israel’s fourth prime minister, Golda Meir, a biography that asks how a lone woman surrounded by men makes it to the top.
Among the prestigious research fellowships that Professor Lahav has earned are a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, a fellowship at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Lahav also served as a religion fellow at Boston University School of Theology (2010, 2011). Professor Lahav delivered several endowed lectures, including the Lapidus Lecture at Princeton University in March 2015, the Rockoff Lecture at Rutgers University in March 2017 and the Taubman Lecture at the University of California in Santa Barbara in November 2017.
Known as a gifted teacher, Professor Lahav was the recipient of the BU Law Melton Prize for excellence in teaching in 2011. For her excellence in scholarship she was awarded the Life Achievement Award in Israel Studies by the Israel Studies Institute and the Association for Israel Studies in June 2017.
Lahav has taught at Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, The Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Herzlia, Oxford University and Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 in Lyon, France. Lahav teaches Constitutional Law, which “automatically keeps your teaching fresh,” she says. “Each year the Court addresses new issues and revisits old ones. Thus, there is always intellectual challenge and deeper exploration.” Lahav also teaches a course on the first amendment (her first love) and a seminar on the constitution and foreign affairs, a course she created especially to strengthen students’ knowledge of constitutional law while engaging with issues affecting the international scene.