Dr. Vera Shikhelman

Research Director

My research has focused on empirical analysis of international dispute resolution mechanisms and, more recently, I have been using computational methods to study the international law arena. At the lab, I plan to explore the role of automation in various dispute resolution arenas, including the international realm, and further explore the use of diverse research methods in generating insights on the “vanishing third party” phenomenon.
I graduated with an LL.B. Degree in Law and a minor in psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After that, I obtained an LL.M. degree from Columbia University in the City of New York and a JSD (law doctorate) degree from the University of Chicago. During the last year of my JSD studies, I was an Emil Noel research fellow at NYU Law School. My past research focused on decision-making, procedure and access to justice in international tribunals and institutions. In my work, I use both qualitative and quantitative empirical research methods, as well as natural language processing (NLP). I have also worked in civil-commercial litigation for a few years, which gave me a practical insider perspective on the different aspects of dispute resolution. My research has been published in leading international law journals, including the European Journal of International Law. I have also presented my work at various prestigious conferences, such as the American Law and Economics Association (ALEA) annual meeting.
For instance, my article on Geography, Politics and Culture in the UN Human Rights Committee (published in the European Journal of International Law) focuses on the impartiality and independence of United Nations Human Rights Committee members (“CMs”). The main hypothesis of the paper is that CMs tend to vote in favor of countries that are close geographically, politically and culturally to their own country of origin. A quantitative-empirical analysis finds certain evidence that CMs tend to vote in favor of countries that are geopolitically similar to their countries of origin. Evidence for cultural voting patterns is more limited. However, the article suggests that geopolitical influences are significant only in the hardest cases where there is no clear legal answer and that in most cases the decisions of the HRC are not biased.
Another paper that I have published about the United Nations Human Rights Committee, Access to Justice in the UN Human Rights Committee (published in the Michigan Journal of International Law), addresses the subject of access to international justice in the context of the Human Rights Committee. This paper uses the Committee as a case study for evaluating the success of one of the most important developments in human rights law, which is granting individuals standing before international institutions. It uses a mixed methods empirical research design. For the quantitative part of the paper, I conduct regression analysis using an original dataset of the number of communications filed against different countries throughout the years, and of the different characteristics of those countries. For the qualitative part of the paper, I used 32 interviews conducted by me with individuals who brought communications to the Committee.
I find that the HRC is not accessible to people from poor and non-democratic countries. The main problems with the accessibility to the Committee are lack of awareness to its existence, fear of state retribution, budgetary problems within the UN, and lack of implementation by states. However, the process is generally perceived as fair, and the Committee is accessible to a certain degree even to applicants without legal representation. Finally, I also discuss what could be done in order to make international human rights institutions (and especially the HRC) more accessible to people from countries with gross human rights violations and little awareness of international institutions.
Another article, Enforcement of Foreign Judgements – Israel as a Case Study (forthcoming in the Journal of Private International Law) is about the conditions under which Israeli courts are willing to enforce judgements of foreign courts. There are two main theories about why courts enforce judgements of foreign courts – vested rights (protecting the rights of the individual) and international comity (international relations considerations). Therefore, my research attempts to show which considerations are more prominent in determining whether a court would enforce a foreign judgment in the Israeli context. I find that in general comity considerations are somewhat more important, however, factors such as the specific characteristics of the case and the court in front of which the case is adjudicated also play a very important role.
My most recent work, a joint project with Tomer Broude and Renan Keydar from the Hebrew University, focuses on using computational NLP methods in order to analyze and understand the human rights discourse in the United Nations. We develop a computational model which analyzes dynamic patterns of topical distribution within the United Nations human rights system, building on a textual corpus (180,000 recommendations) that reflects the output of the UN human rights system over 15 years.