BACKGROUND

Intisar A. Rabb recently joined the law faculty of Boston College Law School, where she will teach in the areas of criminal law, legislation, advanced constitutional law, and Islamic and comparative law.  She is also a research affiliate at the Harvard Law School Islamic Legal Studies Program.  As a 2009 Carnegie Scholar, she is researching criminal law reform in Muslim countries in a project called “Islamic Law and Legal Change: The Internal Critique.”  Her research in comparative law and legal history combines a policy-oriented assessment of public values with theoretical analysis of schools of legal interpretation in different systems of law.  She is particularly interested in questions at the intersection of criminal justice, legislative policy, and judicial process in American law and in the law of the Middle East and the wider Muslim world.

Rabb received a BA with honors from Georgetown University and a JD from Yale Law School.  She is currently completing a PhD in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, where her dissertation focuses on the history and function of legal maxims in Islamic law.  She served as a law clerk to the Hon. Thomas L. Ambro of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, and subsequently worked with members of the bench and bar in the U.K. as a Temple Bar Scholar through the American Inns of Court.  She has helped design and teach courses in legal research and writing and in Islamic law.

In law school, Rabb served on the editorial boards of the Yale Journal of International Law and the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, as well as on the board of the Black Law Students Association; she also worked in the Criminal Defense Clinic and at the Connecticut Public Defender’s Office.  She currently serves as a Member of the Executive Committee of the Yale Law School Association and remains active in the Yale Law School Middle East Legal Studies Seminar.

Rabb has traveled for research to Egypt, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere. She speaks Arabic and Persian and has reading proficiency in French, German, and Spanish.

EDUCATION

B.S. Georgetown University
M.A., Ph.D (expected 2009) Princeton University
J.D. Yale Law School

APPOINTMENTS

Boston College Law School
Assistant Professor of Law, 2009-
 
Harvard Law School | Islamic Legal Studies Program
Affiliate in Research, 2009-

Carnegie Corporation of New York | Islam Scholars Program
Carnegie Scholar, 2009-2011

COURSES 

   PUBLICATIONS

• "'We the Jurists': Islamic Constitutionalism in Iraq." University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 10 (2008): 527-279.  
• "Courts." In Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, John Esposito, ed., 2007.
• "Civil Law." In Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, John Esposito, ed., 2007.
• "Fiqh [Positive Law]" In Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, John Esposito, ed., 2007.
• "Ijtihād [Islamic Legal Reasoning.]" In Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, John Esposito, ed., 2007.
• "Non-Canonical Readings of the Qur'ān: Recognition & Authenticity." Journal of Qur'ānic Studies 8 (2006): 84-127.
• "Islamic Jurisprudence." Review of Muhammad Baqir As-Sadr, Lessons in Islamic Jurisprudence, translated by Roy Mottahedeh. Yale Journal of International Law 30 (2005): 343-346.
• "Marriage: Islamic." In Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, Josef Meri, ed., vol. 2, 480-481. New York: Routledge, 2006.
• Review of Giving Meaning to Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, edited by Isfahan Merali & Valerie Oosterveld. Yale Journal of International Law 27 (2002): 233-236.
• "Administrative Decrees of the Political Authorities (Qānūn): The Mamluk Period." In Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History, Stanley Katz et al. eds., 33-34. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.