Dorit Beinisch

Dorit Beinisch was born in 1942 in Tel Aviv

Dorit Werba was born in Tel Aviv in 1942. Her parents, Aharon and Chava Werba, came to the country from Poland in 1933. Her father was a civil servant and her mother was a kindergarten teacher.

She finished high school at Tichon Hadash in Tel Aviv and served in the IDF. She then studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned her bachelor's degree in 1967 and a master's degree with honors. In 1964 she married Yeheskell Beinisch, a lawyer from Jerusalem.

She joined the Ministry of Justice in 1967 and worked in the State Attorney's Office. As deputy state attorney from 1982, she gathered evidence for the Kahan commission and prosecuted members of the Jewish Underground. She also played a central role in the Kav 300 affair, where she worked against the government and the Shin Bet.

From 1989 to 1995 she was state attorney, the first woman in the post. She oversaw the case against Aryeh Deri, which ended in his conviction, and refused to represent the government over the deportation of Hamas members to Lebanon. She became a Supreme Court justice in 1995 and its president in 2006.

She retired in 2012. From 2012 to 2014 she taught a seminar at NYU Law, and in 2013 she became chancellor of the Open University of Israel. She has criticized the government's judicial reform plan as a threat to judicial independence.