Sadiq Reza

Professor of Law

Editor, Islamic Law and Law of the Muslim World Research Paper Series (SSRN Journal)
2008 Carnegie Scholar
2009 Chair, Section on Islamic Law, Association of American Law Schools

A scholar and teacher of criminal law and procedure (American, comparative, and Islamic), Professor Reza is a former public defender in Washington, D.C., and award-winning teacher at Harvard in courses on Islam and the modern Middle East.

Professor Reza's current scholarship focuses on criminal law and procedure under Islamic law (sharia) and in the countries of today's Muslim world. One of his projects involves identifying rules of criminal procedure in classical and modern Islamic jurisprudence; in 2008 he was named a Carnegie Scholar for this project. (See here for a description of the Carnegie Scholars program, and here for a description of Professor Reza's project.)

Professor Reza has been a visiting scholar at Harvard's Islamic Legal Studies Program and a visiting professor at Boston University School of Law and American University's Washington College of Law. In 2007 he was named New York Law School's Teacher of the Year.

While in law school, Professor Reza was an articles editor for the Harvard International Law Journal, a member of the Criminal Justice Institute and Prison Legal Assistance Project clinics, president of the Middle Eastern Law Students Association, and a teaching fellow in Harvard undergraduate courses on Islam and the modern Middle East, for which he received a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching in 1990. Before law school Professor Reza spent two years at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, teaching English and studying Arabic at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad.