Itay Ravid

Itay Ravid is a doctoral candidate (J.S.D) at Stanford Law School. His work lies at the intersection of criminal law, judicial behavior and media studies. His dissertation focuses on the relationship between distorted media portrayals of ethnic and racial minorities in the context of crime and criminality and racial inequalities in the criminal justice system. Itay received his B.A. and LL.B in mass communication and Law from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, his LL.M in Public and International Law from Northwestern and Tel Aviv universities and his JSM from Stanford Law School. Before coming to Stanford Itay was an attorney at the Israeli Attorney General’s office and later served as a senior legal clerk to Justice Dorit Beinisch, Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court.

Dissertation: Judging by the Cover: Media Effects on Racial Disparities in Criminal Sentencing

Itay’s study explores to what extent crime-related media schemas—becoming cognitive shortcuts to understand crime and race—permeate the criminal justice system. His longitudinal study uses ten years of newspaper coverage and sentencing data to quantitatively assess whether trends in coverage of African-Americans in the context of crime are associated with punishments imposed on them. Through this innovative approach, Itay’s research advances knowledge on the use of implicit racial cues in an era of alleged colorblindness and conceptualizes the relationship between rational choice and behavioral models of judicial decision-making.