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.

Haider Ala Hamoudi’s scholarship focuses on Middle Eastern and Islamic Law, particularly, but not exclusively, as it pertains to matters of commerce. He has called for a reassessment of the manner in which law in the Muslim world is understood and approached, with less reliance on medieval texts and more emphasis on the positive law of the nation states of the Muslim world and on the political, social, economic and ideological influences that influence its interpretation. 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 New York Times, Forbes.com, Slate.com, the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour Online and the New York Law Journal.  In 2009, Professor Hamoudi was awarded the Hessel Yntema prize, awarded by the American Society of Comparative Law for the best article produced in the American Journal of Comparative Law the previous year by an author under the age of 40.

Professor Hamoudi is currently spending his time in Baghdad advising the Constitutional Review Committee of the Iraqi legislature, responsible for developing critical amendments to the Iraq Constitution deemed necessary for Iraqi national reconciliation, on behalf of the United States Embassy in Baghdad. He is also advising on other key pieces of legislation, including a hydrocarbons law, a revenue management law, and an antitrust law. In 2003 and 2004, Professor Hamoudi served as 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 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, Baghdad Booksellers, Basra Carpet Merchants, and the Law of God and Man: Legal Pluralism and the Contemporary Muslim Experience Berkeley Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Law (Inaugural Issue), Vol. 1, No. 1, 2008.
• 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). Available on SSRN.
• 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). Available on SSRN.
• Haider Ala Hamoudi, Muhammad’s Social Justice or Muslim Cant?: Langdellianism and the Failures of Islamic Finance, 40 Cornell Int. L. Rev. 89 (2007). Available on SSRN.
• Haider Ala Hamoudi, Money Laundering Amidst Mortars: Legislative Process and State Authority in Post-Invasion Iraq, 16 Trans. L. & Contemp. Prob. 523 (2007). Available on SSRN.
• Haider Ala Hamoudi, Jurisprudential Schizophrenia: Form and Function in Islamic Finance, 7 Chi. J. Int. L. 605 (2006). Available on SSRN.
• Haider Ala Hamoudi, Toward a Rule of Law Society in Iraq: Introducing Clinical Legal Education into Iraqi Law Schools, 23 Berkeley J. Int. L. 113 (2005).  Available on SSRN.