Speaker Bio
Prof. Hanan Melcer (hereinafter also: Melcer), Justice and Deputy President (retired) of the Supreme Court of Israel, was born in Israel in 1951 to parents who were Holocaust survivors.
He is married to Adv., Margalit Einhorn Melcer and they have four sons, four grandsons and five granddaughters.
Melcer grew up in Tel Aviv and attended High School at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, where he served as the President of the Student Council.
After High School, he studied law in the Tel Aviv University, earning his law degree, magna cum laude, in 1973.
After Melcer finished his studies, he was admitted to the Israeli Bar and shortly thereafter founded a law firm of his own: Melcer and Co., which rapidly developed into one of the most prominent law firms in Israel at that time, specializing in: Public Law, Communication Law, Financial Law, Infrastructure Law, and Commercial Law.
As a lawyer, Melcer served as Legal Counsel to several highly respected public and commercial groups and entities, such as: Channel 2 News Company (the main TV network in Israel at the time), for which he served as Chief External Legal Counsel from the date of its inception until his nomination to the Supreme Court.
Within the framework of his law firm activities, Melcer was also responsible for the legal aspects of key infrastructure projects in Israel, such as: the Cross-Israel Highway, the Ben-Gurion Airport Terminal 2000 Project, the Israeli initiative for the underwater wire communication cable (Med 1), the Israeli Civil Satellite, and the Light Railway Project in Tel Aviv.
Melcer was also the chief litigator of his law firm and before his nomination to the Supreme Court he appeared before the Supreme Court in more than 100 cases. When serving as Litigator, many of Melcer's cases set important precedents in various fields such as: Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Commercial Law, Infrastructure Law, Criminal Law, and also on matters such as Freedom of Speech and Media.
In addition to his activities as a lawyer, Melcer served at the beginning of his career as a Research Assistant in Constitutional Law and Administrative Law to the late Professor Amnon Rubinstein, then the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the Tel Aviv University, and later as a Teaching Assistant in Administrative Law to Dr. Asher D. Grunis, who was later elected as the President of the Supreme Court of Israel.
In the following years, Melcer was a Teaching Assistant in Property Law to the late Dr. Amnon Goldenberg, and to Professor Uriel Reichman.
From 1998 to 2002, Justice Melcer served as Senior Lecturer for Administrative Law in the Bar-Ilan University's Law Faculty, and led a seminar on Privatization Law and Liberalization in the Law Faculty of the Tel Aviv University. After he became a Supreme Court Justice, he also taught for serval years Tender Law at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Justice Melcer was appointed as Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel in 2007, and took his seat on August 27th of that same year.
On April 6th, 2017, Justice Melcer was appointed as the Chairman of the Central Elections Committee for the 21st Knesset, and on June, 2019, he was reelected to serve in the same position for the elections of the 22st Knesset (It was the first time in the history of Israel that a Justice was appointed twice for that position).
On August 4th, 2017, Justice Melcer was appointed as a member of the Judicial Selection Committee for judges.
On October 30th, 2017, Justice Melcer was sworn-in as the Deputy President of the Supreme Court, after being elected for that position by the Judicial Selection Committee.
On April 12th, 2021, when Justice Melcer reached the age of 70 he retired (as is mandatory under Israeli Law).
In October 2021, Justice (Ret.) Melcer was appointed as the President of the Press and Communications Council in Israel (on a voluntary basis).
In 2022, Justice (Ret.) Melcer received a nomination as Adjunct Associate Professor in the Law Faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. And he is teaching there two courses: Tender Low and Election Laws in the Era of Social Networks.
Melcer is now acting in Yad Va’Shem as the Chairman of the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations and he is handling International Mediations and Arbitrations.