2026-10-10
Biosketch—Joseph Zernik, PhD, LLB
Overview
Joseph Zernik, PhD, LLB, has served for the past 17 years as Research Director of Human Rights Alert—NGO. His main interest is in the analysis of ICT systems law and justice agencies, and their impact on human rights. His work in this field has been cited by the UN Human Rights Council, and he has been consulted or invited by the U.S. Department of State, an EU-wide law faculty colloquium at Göttingen University, and the Israeli Supreme Court leadership (details below).
UN Universal Periodic Review submissions
Dr. Zernik was the lead author of Human Rights Alert—NGO submissions to the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United States (2010, 2015) and of Israel (2013, 2018). The submissions focused on the law and justice agencies, in particular on ICT systems of courts and prisons. All four were reviewed by the Council’s professional staff and are incorporated by reference with short summaries in the Council’s final reports on the two countries.
United States, 2010: “HRAlert referred to corruption in the courts and the legal profession, and discrimination of US law enforcement in California.70” (A/HRC/WG.6/9/USA/3/Rev.1)
Israel, 2013: “25. Human Rights Alert (HRA) submission focused on the lack of integrity of the electronic record systems of the Supreme Court, District Court and Detainees’ Courts in Israel.34“ (A/HRC/WG.6/15/ISR/3)
Israel, 2018: “24. HRA-NGO highlighted the serious deterioration in integrity of law and justice agencies as a consequence of the implementation of e-government systems. It affirmed that the validity and integrity of any legal and judicial records of Israel should be deemed dubious at best.52”(A/HRC/WG.6/29/ISR/3)
Work on court records and case management systems
2013, “not signed yet” protocol—Dr. Zernik exposed an April 4, 2013 hearing protocol by Judge Esperanza Alon in the Haifa Family Court, bearing an electronic watermark reading “not signed yet.” In 2024, 11 years later, the Administration of Courts initiated a simulated complaint review procedure (Dr. Zernik had filed no complaint) and stated that the watermark was not a built-in feature of Net HaMishpat (ICT system of the Israeli courts), but couldn’t explain how it appeared.
2013, “double books”—Dr. Zernik exposed two March 17, 2013, different, conflicting “post-it” decisions by Judge Esperanza Alon on the same motion. Both decisions remained in Net HaMishpat for at least 10 years. Which one a person sees depends on the User ID: the litigant sees Version A and the court secretariat sees Version B. It should be distinguished from the earlier, 2011 Judge Varda Alshech affair, where the two versions of the hearing protocol, versions were never simultaneously maintained in the system, but were 2 drafts of one document at different points in time, according to the Ombudsman of the Judiciary’s Decision 88/12/Tel Aviv District (May 31, 2012).
2016, “Draft” decisions—Dr. Zernik exposed the invalid, simulated decision records in the Joelle Ben Simon affair in the Jerusalem Family Court, where a secretariat official declined to provide litigant Ben Simon copies of decisions in 22 files over about five years, on the ground that they were “Drafts.” The decisions bore an electronic “Draft” watermark. The Ombudsman’s decision in the Alshech affair had already found that documents bearing such watermarks had no validity as court documents.
2018, Supreme Court disclaimer footnote—following the 2018 UPR report, Dr. Zernik asked Chief Justice Esther Hayut to remove the footnote “The copy is subject to editing and phrasing changes,” which had appeared on all Supreme Court decisions for about 16 years. It was introduced in 2002 and replaced the earlier certification dating to the British Mandate, “True copy of the original,” signed by the chief clerk. The Chief Justice agreed, and her bureau sent him a thank-you note.
2020, access to “technical” decisions in State of Israel v. Netanyahu—the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Dr. Zernik, representing the NGO, in Civil Appeal 4421/20 Dr. Joseph Zernik v. State of Israel, Netanyahu et al. (August 20, 2020), concerning public access to decisions of a three-judge District Court panel in Criminal File 67104-01-20 State of Israel v. Netanyahu. Notable Advocate Avigdor Feldman described the judgment in Haaretz (Aug. 27, 2020) as “an historic event in our legal world.” In the same affair Dr. Zernik recorded that the District Court panel recorded his motions not in the main file but in a “Talap”-type file, which an Administration of Courts research paper (Winshel et al., 2011) describes as a “fictitious file.”
2020, Freedom of Information petition—the NGO won costs and a fee refund in Administrative Petition 39537-05-20 Zernik v. Judge Yigal Marzel and the Courts Administration. In the petition, counsel for the Administration conceded that there was no governmental body called the “Judicial Authority”; it was only a moniker.
2021, electronic signatures—the NGO’s petition 11963-09-21 was dismissed. The court held, from personal knowledge, that the “Israeli Courts Authority,” which signed and certified all the judges’ electronic signatures in Net HaMishpat, did not exist as a governmental body.
2022, Zadorov—Civil Appeal 7215/22 ended an eight-year search for the written verdict in the first Roman Zadorov trial in Nazareth. The verdict had been issued from the old ICT system, no longer valid for use there, and was not hand-signed by the judges as that system required.
2022, Pfizer agreement—in Administrative Petition 15789-09-22, at the height of the Corona crisis, which he conducted before the Jerusalem District Court, the Ministry of Health told the court that it could not find the agreement signed with Pfizer.
2023, three-judge signatures—the Supreme Court’s judgment in Civil Appeal 3763/22 (Feb. 8, 2023) dismissed the NGO’s appeal for information on how three judges sign a criminal judgment in Net HaMishpat. In his account, the system allows only one signature, contrary to the Criminal Procedure Law.
2023, Effi Naveh—following the NGO’s action, the court record of the conviction of the former Bar Association chairman Effi Naveh was amended. The court file had shown a pop-up reading “Document not currently available” in place of the verdict, and a scanned verdict was later uploaded.
Invitations and consultations
2018—invited to lead a seminar on Net HaMishpat and the Israeli justice system at a colloquium of law professors from across the European Union, at the University of Göttingen law school, Germany.
January 2019—invited to a small, closed meeting on “Threats to the Integrity of Elections in Israel,” led by Prof. Yuval Shany, with Deputy Chief Justice Hanan Melcer (Chair of the Central Elections Committee), a senior representative of the State Comptroller, and two INSS fellows (the retired heads of the legal and technology departments of the Shin Bet). He was invited because of his critical publications, from 2017, on the Central Elections Committee’s information system.
2020—asked by the U.S. Department of State, on its own initiative, to contribute a short periodic report on Israel’s justice system.
July 2025—invited to sessions of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on the Family Courts (proposed Amendment to the Courts Law – Publication of Rulings in the Family Courts). He submitted a short written opinion and, at the July 30, 2025 session, an oral opinion, stating for the record that indicia of organized crime are apparent in the Family Courts. The opinion was based on the findings in the Joelle Ben Simon affair (Jerusalem, 2016).
Recent proceedings, 2024–2026
2024, SC 45004-03-24 Zernik v. Bank Hapoalim (Tel Aviv)—Dr. Zernik documented that the law firm of Yosef Yeshurun & Co. was secretly entered in Net HaMishpat as Counsel for Bank Hapoalim, with no due process, where normally representation by counsel is prohibited by law.
2026, “not signed yet” protocol—in April 2013, Judge Esperanza Alon issued the “not signed yet” protocol. In September 2024 the Court Administration issued a Complaint Review letter in this mater, although Dr. Zernik had never filed a complaint. Consequently, in 2026, Dr. Zernik filed Freedom of Information request on details of the Complaint, e.g., the purported complaint letter. The Court Administration refused to address the FOIA request, stating that it reflected Dr. Zernik’s dissatisfaction with the Complaint Review, and therefore, the due procedure is a challenge to the Complaint Review.
2024–present, Haifa Family Court—Dr. Zernik documented various features of Net HaMishpat that he claims are inconsistent with valid operation of a court ICT system, or conduct of a competent court: selective and differential view to the parties of the actions in the informal docket, about 25% of the registered items in the informal docket are invisible to a party, failure to establish fundamental Rules of Court for operations in Net HaMishpat, and a policy of tolerance for adulterated data entries in Net HaMishpat, which should be deemed perversion of court process.
2025, High Court of Justice—he filed an inspection request in HCJ 54321-03-25 Movement for Quality Government v. Government of Israel (the Ronen Bar matter), raising the change in public inspection rights, including the loss of access to signatures on judicial documents, when Net HaMishpat entered service in the Supreme Court on August 4, 2024.
September 2, 2026—Dr. Zernik asked Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit to remove the “Blue Shield” and “Green Seal” features recently added to Net HaMishpat. He argued that, unlike similar visual markers used by Adobe and Google, the markers added to Net HaMishpat lacked the digital infrastructure behind them and could mislead the public.
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