BACKGROUND

Intisar A. Rabb is a member of the law faculty at Boston College Law School, where she teaches in the areas of advanced constitutional law, criminal law, and comparative and Islamic law.  She is also a research affiliate at the Harvard Law School Islamic Legal Studies Program and a 2010 Carnegie Scholar, awarded a grant for her research on "Islamic Law and Legal Change: The Internal Critique," which examines criminal law reform in the Muslim world.  Her research in comparative law and legal history combines a policy-oriented assessment of public values with analyses of various 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, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, where her dissertation--which won the Princeton Bayard and Cleveland Dodge Memorial Thesis Prize for Best PhD Dissertation--focused 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.

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 the Princeton Graduate School Leadership Council, and she 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.

View her research on her SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=978361

EDUCATION

B.S. Georgetown University
M.A., Ph.D 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, 2010-2012

COURSES 

PUBLICATIONS

• "Islamic Legal Maxims as Substantive Canons of Construction: Hudūd-Avoidance in Cases of Doubt."  Islamic Law and Society 17 (2010): 63-125.
• "Administrative Decrees of the Political Authorities (Qānūn): The Mamlūk Period." In Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History, Stanley Katz et al. eds., 33-34. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• "'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.