New Faces
Photography © CIDDE
David Harris and Haider Ala Hamoudi join the Pitt Law faculty this academic year, bringing with them nationally recognized expertise in criminal justice and Islamic commercial law.
David Harris, who will join the faculty in January as a Professor of Law, is a leading national scholar on racial profiling who has written extensively on the subject as well as on police practices, law enforcement, criminal justice and national security issues. His 2005 book, Good Cops: The Case for Preventive Policing, uses numerous case studies illustrating the effectiveness of prevention as a law enforcement strategy—a strategy that maintains citizens’ safety without sacrificing their civil rights.
He is the author of Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work as well as a number of scholarly articles that were among the first to examine traffic stops of minority motorists.
His combined body of work has influenced the national debate on racial profiling, leading to the first federal legislative proposal on the issue of profiling, to pending legislation in dozens of states, and voluntary efforts in hundreds of police departments throughout the country.
Professor Harris is a frequent commentator in the national media on issues of police practice and racial profiling—from “The Today Show” and “Dateline NBC” to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
He has also served as a member of the Civil Liberties Advisory Board to the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security.
Also new to the faculty this year is Assistant Professor of Law, Haider Ala Hamoudi, whose expertise in commercial and Islamic law adds to the depth of Pitt’s commercial and comparative law offerings, as well as adding to Pitt Law’s emerging strength in the study of law and religion.
Professor Hamoudi is a former legal advisor to the Finance Committee of the Iraq Governing Council and continues to advise the Iraqi Government, primarily through the Iraq Mission at the United Nations. He also served as a Program Manager for a project designed to improve legal education in Iraq, sponsored by the International Human Rights Law Institute of De Paul University School of Law.
His numerous publications include “Money Laundering Amidst Mortars: Legislative Process and State Authority in Post Invasion Iraq” (Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems), “Jurisprudential Schizophrenia: Form and Function in Islamic Finance” (Chicago Journal of International Law), and “Toward the Establishment of a Rule of Law Society: Introducing Clinical Legal Education into Iraqi Law Schools” (Berkeley Journal of International Law). The memoir of his experiences in Iraq, entitled Howling in Mesopotamia, will be published in the spring of 2008.
Professor Harris will teach courses in Criminal Procedure and Evidence and Professor Hamoudi will teach Contracts and a seminar course in Islamic Law and Jurisprudence.
