Associate Professor of Law
E-mail: aquraishi@wisc.edu
Telephone: (608)263-7604
Office: Room 7111, Law School
Education:
S.J.D., Harvard law School (2006)
LL.M., Columbia Law School (1998)
J.D., University of California-Davis (1992)
B.A., University of California-Berkeley (1988)
Teaching Areas:
Constitutional Law
Islamic Law
Recently Taught Courses
731 Constitutional Law I
740 Constitutional Law II
896 WI Journal of Law, Gender & Society
896 WI Journal of Law, Gender & Society
940 L&CP: Intro to Islamic Law
940 L&CP: Intro to Islamic Law
Research Interests:
Islamic Constitutionalism
Sharia in America
Biography
Asifa Quraishi-Landes specializes in comparative Islamic and U.S.constitutional law, with a current focus on modern Islamic constitutional theory. She is a 2009 Carnegie Scholar and 2012 Guggenheim Fellow.
Her recent publications include articles on comparative legal theory and Islamic law. Her latest publications are "The Separation of Powers in the Tradition of Muslim Governments," a chapter in Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity, edited by Tilmann Roder, Rainer Grote & Katrin Geenen, ed.s) (Oxford University Press, December 2011), and "What if Sharia Weren't the Enemy: Re-Thinking International Women's Rights Activism and Islamic Law" (Columbia Journal of Gender & the Law, Vol. 20, 2011).
Currently, she is working on a Guggenhim-supported project to articulate a new constitutional framework for Muslim majority countries that will answer both the Muslim impulse for a sharia-based government, as well as secular concerns that a non-theocratic system is important in order to respect human and civil rights. The tentative title of this project is "Islamic Constitutionalism for the 21st Century: Not Theocratic. Not Secular. Not Impossible."
Professor Quraishi-Landes holds a doctorate from Harvard Law School and other degrees from Columbia Law School, the University of California at Davis, and the University of California at Berkeley, and has served as law clerk in the United State Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She has served as a Public Delegate on the United States Delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (2010), the Task Force on Religion and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and as advisor to the Pew Force on Religion & Public Life. She is currently on the governing board of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML), Muslim Advocates, the Journal of Law and religion, and the Association of American Law Schools' Section on Islamic Law. She is an affiliate of the Muslim Women's League, past President and Board Member of Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, a Fellow with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and a member of the "Opinion Leaders Network" for the British Council's "Our Shared Future" project.
