Adnan A. Zulfiqar, an interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of law, history, and religion, is Associate Professor of Law & Marianne D. Short and Ray Skowyra Faculty Fellow at Boston College Law School. He also holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Theology at the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, as well as with the university鈥檚 interdisciplinary program in Islamic Civilization and Societies. His research focuses on critically examining frameworks underlying legal discourse in both domestic and global contexts, with a special interest in the concept of duty/obligation and the idea of discretion in the law.
His primary fields of inquiry have been criminal law and procedure, Islamic law and its legal history, human rights, and law in the Global South. Zulfiqar鈥檚 most recent scholarship critiques aspects of international human rights and offers new ways to approach the diffusion of human rights norms. His forthcoming book,听Duties to the Collective,听studies how medieval Muslim jurists utilized collective duties to promote social and political cohesion in a time of existential crisis for the Abbasid caliphate. Zulfiqar conducts his research in multiple languages and has spent over a decade in the Middle East, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. He has held numerous fellowships, including at Stanford University鈥檚 Humanities Center, the University of Pennsylvania (Sharswood), Damascus University in Syria (CASA), and the Harry F. Guggenheim Foundation. A number of academic journals have published his work, among them the听Yale Journal of International Law,听the听American Journal of Legal History,听Journal of Comparative Law (U.K.), West Virginia Law Review, NYU Journal of International Law & Politics听and Harvard鈥檚听Journal of Islamic Law.
Prior to joining 色花堂 Law, Zulfiqar taught at Rutgers Law School. He is a former international legal consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, where he assisted with the drafting and implementation of a new criminal code and commentary for the Republic of the Maldives. He also advised on the new criminal code and commentary for Somalia under the auspices of the International Development Law Organization.
Zulfiqar鈥檚 past experiences include working as an associate in the Investigations, White Collar and Fraud group at Hogan Lovells, LLP in Washington, DC; as a legislative staffer to Senator Max Cleland in the U.S. Congress; and, as a Commissioner appointed by the mayor to serve on the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission, the city鈥檚 official civil rights agency. From the University of Pennsylvania, he earned three degrees: his J.D, as well as his M.A. and Ph.D. in near eastern languages and civilizations. He received his M.L.S. in international affairs from Georgetown University, and his听B.A. in听religion and anthropology from Emory University.
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RECENT MEDIA & APPEARANCES
