Haider Ala Hamoudi

Professor Hamoudi received his B.Sc. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993, with a double major in Physics and Humanities with a Near Eastern Studies Concentration. He was both a member of the Physics Honor Society, Sigma Pi Sigma, and a Burchard Scholar for Excellence in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 1996, Professor Hamoudi received his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Constance Baker Motley in the Southern District of New York and then worked as an Associate at the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton until 2003.

Thereafter, Professor Hamoudi went to Iraq and acted as both a legal advisor to the Finance Committee of the Iraq Governing Council, as well as a Program Manager for a project managed by the International Human Rights Law Institute of DePaul University School of Law to improve legal education in Iraq. Professor Hamoudi continues to advise the Iraqi Government, primarily through the Iraq Mission at the United Nations. Professor Hamoudi's scholarship focuses on commercial law, Islamic law, and the intersection of the two in the contemporary era. He has written for numerous law reviews, spoken at conferences sponsored by the MacMillan Center at Yale University, the American Association of Law Schools and the New York City Bar Association, and given interviews to various news organizations including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour Online and the New York Law Journal.

Professor Hamoudi is also the author of a blog on Islamic Law entitled Islamic Law in Our Times. 

Currently Teaching

• Contracts (Fall 08)
• Commercial Transactions (Fall 08)
• Islamic Law and Jurisprudence Seminar (Spring 09)

Selected Publications

Books:

• Haider Ala Hamoudi, Howling in Mesopotamia (Beaufort Books 2008).

Articles:

• Haider Ala Hamoudi, The Muezzin’s Call and the Dow Jones Bell: On the Necessity of Realism in the Study of Islamic Law, 56 Am. J. Comp. L. (forthcoming 2008).
• Haider Ala Hamoudi, You Say You Want a Revolution: Deviationist Doctrine, Interpretive Communities and the Origins of Islamic Finance, 48 Va. J. Int. L. 249 (2008).
• Haider Ala Hamoudi, Muhammad’s Social Justice or Muslim Cant?: Langdellianism and the Failures of Islamic Finance, 40 Cornell Int. L. Rev. 89 (2007).
• Haider Ala Hamoudi, Money Laundering Amidst Mortars: Legislative Process and State Authority in Post-Invasion Iraq, 16 Trans. L. & Contemp. Prob. 523 (2007).
• Haider Ala Hamoudi, Jurisprudential Schizophrenia: Form and Function in Islamic Finance, 7 Chi. J. Int. L. 605 (2006).
• Haider Ala Hamoudi, Toward the Establishment of a Rule of Law Society: Introducing Clinical Legal Education into Iraqi Law Schools, 23 Berkeley J. Int. L. 113 (2005).