George Bisharat

The Honorable Raymond L. Sullivan Professor of Law UC Hastings College of the Law

  • San Francisco CA

Contacts: bisharat@uchastings.edu / 415-565-4721 / Office 603F-200

Contact

UC Hastings College of the Law

View more experts managed by UC Hastings College of the Law

Biography

George E. Bisharat was a trial lawyer for the Office of the Public Defender in San Francisco before joining the UC Hastings faculty in 1991. Professor Bisharat studied law, anthropology, and Middle East studies at Harvard, and wrote a book about Palestinian lawyers working under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank. He writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East, both for academic audiences and for major media sources in the U.S. and abroad. Professor Bisharat is an avid fly fisher, sometimes in such exotic locations as Russia and New Zealand, and also writes articles for fly fishing magazines. He is a singer, songwriter, and blues harmonica player specializing in the chromatic harmonica, and as "Big Harp George" has recorded two albums that earned award nominations and critical acclaim . His wife, Jaleh Bisharat, is a business marketing executive working in high tech.

Areas of Expertise

Criminal Procedure
Islamic Law
Law and Social Anthropology
Criminal Practice
Law in Middle East Societies
Middle Eastern Affairs

Education

Harvard University

Ph.D.

Anthropology and Middle East Studies

1987

Georgetown University

M.A.

History

University of California at Berkeley

B.A.

Anthropology

Media Appearances

Verdict Was a Death Blow to Image of American Even-Handedness

The New York Times  online

2015-02-24

The jury's judgment should finally extinguish any hope Palestinians may have harbored that their people could expect justice from any branch of the U.S. government. Congress invites Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to give an address just months after Israel forces pounded the Gaza Strip, killing some 2,200 Palestinians, the majority of the civilians, including approximately 500 children...

View More

Israel Has Overreacted to the Threats It Provoked

The New York Times  online

2015-02-24

All nations have a right of self-defense, including Israel. But that right may be exercised lawfully only in limited circumstances. Israel cannot validly claim self-defense in its recent onslaught against Gaza for two main reasons...

View More

Washington Pays Lip Service to Israeli War Crimes: U.S. Veto Power Ensures Israel’s Impunity from International Law

Center for Research on Globalization  online

2014-07-27

"The United States veto power in the United Nations Security Council is the single most important factor in enabling Israel’s decades long impunity from international law,” said Prof. George Bisharat in an exclusive interview with Fars News Agency. Prof. Bisharat whose commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict regularly appears on the academic publications and major newspapers in the United States says that there’s no elctoral advantage for the politicians to criticize Israel for its war crimes, instead, they can raise remarkable funds for their campaigns if they condone Israel’s brutalities and sympathize with it...

View More

Show All +

Selected Articles

Anthropology and Law as Two Sibling Rivals

Antropolítica: Revista Contemporânea de Antropologia

2013-01-01

This lecture discusses the relationship between two academic disciplines, law and anthropology, and suggests that the optimal relationship is, on the one hand, competitive and conflictual, and on the other hand, mutually respectful and supportive — something like the relationship between two sibling rivals. The conflictual aspects of this relationship derive from the different orientations of the two fields — instrumental for law, speculative for anthropology — and the fact that anthropology, based on long-term ethnography, often challenges and subverts law’s claims to distinctive authority. The positive aspects of the relationship build on the possibilities that each field can genuinely assist the other, as anthropological understanding can be extremely useful to lawyers, while lawyers are often the legal system’s most astute observers and critics, and thus can provide anthropologists with invaluable insights into the actual operations of legal systems. These points are illustrated through references to the author’s fieldwork in Palestine and legal practice experience in the United States.

View more

Re-Democratizing Palestinian Politics

UCLA Journal of International Foreign Affairs

2013-01-01

The main objective of this article is to examine the contemporary challenges to re-democratization in Palestinian politics. Such an examination is timely as the current leadership of the Palestinian people, institutionalized in the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA), is viewed by many Palestinians as out of touch with their needs, and overly prepared to sacrifice their perceived rights and interests in negotiations with Israel. Palestinian politics have never been fully democratic. It follows that for Palestinian politics to be successfully democratized today, it is not sufficient to simply return to past practices not to restore pre-existing institutions to their previous statuses...

View more

Violence's Law: Israel's Campaign to Transform International Legal Norms

Journal of Palestine Studies

2013-01-01

Commonly law is seen as an alternative to violence, although it relies on violence or its threat for enforcement. Through a study of Israel’s campaign to transform international humanitarian law (IHL) by systematically violating it, this essay considers the possibility that violence precedes and even creates law. Israel has a long history of ad hoc 'legal entrepreneurialism,' but its current effort, launched during the second intifada, is institutionalized, persistent, and internally coherent. The essay reviews the specific legal innovations Israel has sought to establish, all of which expand the scope of 'legitimate' violence and its targets, contrary to IHL’s fundamental purposes of limiting violence and protecting non-combatants from it.

View more

Show All +