Moshe Cohen-Eliya was born in Haifa, Israel in 1967. He is married to author Iris Eliya-Cohen and is the father of four. In 1993, he received his LLB from the Hebrew University, Law Faculty in Jerusalem and completed his internship under the direction of Adv. Nili Arad, the director of the High Court of Justice Division, in the State Prosecutor's Office. In 1995, Cohen-Eliya completed his LLM in human rights at American University and in 1996, with his return to Israel, was accepted to the direct- PhD Program in the Hebrew University, Law Faculty. He wrote his dissertation on "The Limitation Clauses in the Israeli Basic Laws". During the years 1994-1996, Cohen-Eliya was an attorney for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Among other things, he drafted the bill "Prohibition of Discrimination in Products, Services and Entry into Places of Entertainment and Public Places Law", which was enacted into law in 2000. In addition, in 1999 with Adv. Dan Yakir, he represented the petitioners in HCJ Sagi Zemach, a precedent setting case. The Israel Supreme Court held for the first time that the provision in the Military Rule Law permitting the detention of a soldier for 96 hours before being brought before a judge, violates the soldier's right to liberty—which is protected under the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty—and as such this provision is void. This was the first time the Israeli Supreme Court voided an Act of the Knesset because it violated the rights protected in the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom. In the year 2000, Cohen-Eliya joined the College of Law and Business. In 2002, he was a post-doc research fellow in the Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School and in 2009 was a faculty fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University, under the direction of Prof. Lawrence Lessig. In 2007, he founded the law journal, Law & Ethics of Human Rights, which is presently ranked second out of 595 non-US law journals worldwide; fourth in the category of Jurisprudence and Legal theory, and fourth in the category of human rights according to the Washington Lee Law Journal Rankings and in 2013 founded the "Israel Junior Faculty Workshop". Cohen- Eliya also sat for the selection committee of the Harvard-Stanford International Junior Faculty Forum. On 2015 he founded in Israel the first local branch of ICON-S. Cohen-Eliya served as the Dean of the Law School, College of Law and Business and is currently the President of the College.
Research
Moshe Cohen-Eliya's research focuses on constitutional theory, proportionality, global constitutionalism, institutional corruption, the principle of antidiscrimination, multiculturalism, and human rights. Cohen-Eliya, in collaboration with Dr. Iddo Porat, researches the doctrine of proportionality. In a number of articles written by the two, as well as in the book they co-authored, Proportionality and Constitutional Culture, they posit that the expansion of proportionality worldwide expresses the "culture of justification," i.e., the culture that demands that the State justify all of its actions. The book situates the doctrine within a historical, cultural, and political context and compares between proportionality and its American counterpart— balancing. The book's main claim is that despite the analytical similarities between the two, there are deep cultural and historical differences that influence the manner they are understood and function in constitutional law. Research published together with Dr. Yoav Hammer, while at the Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University, posits that while lobbying could likely promote the democratic process and bolster citizen participation in political decision-making, corporate lobbying arouses concern, particularly related to the integrity of the democratic process since it alters the political order of the day. Cohen-Eliya and Hammer argue that lobbying succeeds in distorting the democratic process especially in niche areas such as capital markets or insurance—fields in which ordinary citizens and politicians have little interest in them and/or lack an understanding. One solution proposed by the authors is to require lobbyists to publish online all written materials they convey to MKs. In this manner, the information becomes transparent and reduces monitoring costs, while encouraging lobbying by competing for economic rivals reducing the risk of rent seeking lobbying. Member of the KnessetShelly Yachimovich introduced a bill based on this idea in the Knesset.
