Yigal Mersel (Israel), Senior Legal Assistant to President Aharon Barak, Supreme Court of Israel

Yigal Mersel will also be serving as an Emile Noel Fellow this year. He graduated in 1996 with an LL.B. degree from Hebrew University, Israel, summa cum laude while winning numerous prizes for outstanding achievements. He than took part in a research project of the European Union on international law and the status of Jerusalem in future peace negotiations. He later became law clerk for the president of the Israeli Supreme Court, Justice Aharon Barak. After his admission to the Israeli bar, Yigal worked from 1997 until 2003 as senior assistant to Justice Barak, in charge of numerous judicial and managerial issues, including comparative law research in a large variety of legal issues. He was also in charge of international relations of the Israeli Supreme Court as well as the Israeli representative to the Venice Commission at the Council of Europe. At the same time, he continued his legal education, receiving in 1998 an LLM from the Hebrew University, summa cum laude. In 2000 he was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. He also won the Wolf foundation prize for outstanding achievements. In 2002 he received a doctorate degree in law from the Hebrew University. His doctoral thesis was entitled "The Constitutional Status of Political Parties". Since 2002 he has been a lecturer of constitutional law at the Hebrew University. His main focus is institutional constitutional law, including political parties, parliamentary law and election law. Yigal is a Fulbright Scholar for the academic year 2003-2004.