Associate Professor of Law
Member at the Institute for Gender and Women's Studies
Amr Shalakany has served as associate professor of law since 2004. He served for four years as LL.M. Program Director since the Law Departments establishment in 2005. He also holds a joint appointment as Assistant Professor of Civil Law at Cairo University Faculty of Law.
Before joining AUC, Shalakany was the Jeremiah Smith Junior Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard Law School, where he taught Comparative Law and Islamic Law. Earlier, he served as legal advisor to the PLO Negotiations Support Unit in Ramallah during the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, and also taught at Birzeit University and helped set up the Law Clinic at the Law Institute. He has also worked as a securities lawyer with the law firm of Baker & McKenzie in London.
Shalakany received his Licence en droit and LL.M. degrees from Cairo University Faculty of Law, and LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees from Harvard Law School. He is admitted to the New York Bar.
Prof Shalakany is on research leave as Carnegie Scholar 2008-10. Current projects include co-editing the collected papers from “New Approaches to Modern Egyptian Legal History,” a symposium held in June 2009; “Modern Egyptian Legal Historiography” (forthcoming in Boutiveau & Maugiron eds., Egypt and Its Laws (2010)); and the book manuscript Restless Jurists Compared: The Critique and Reconstruction of Contract Law Theory in the US, France and Egypt 1900-1942 (forthcoming from Brill 2010).
Courses Taught
Comparative Law
Contracts
Islamic Law
Islamic Law Reform
International Commercial Arbitration
Law and the Visual Arts
Modern Egyptian Legal History
Current Research Interests
Comparative Private Law and Legal Theory; Islamic Law and Historiography; Law and Social Thought.
Honors and Awards
THE CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW YORK, New York, USA
Carnegie Scholar, 2008 – 2010; topic: “The Redefinition of Shari’a in Modern Egyptian Legal Thought: 1798 – Present.”
THE FORD FOUNDATION, Cairo, Egypt
Conference/book-editing grant, 2009 – 2010; topic: “New Approaches to Modern Egyptian Legal History: Late Ottoman Period to the Present.”
EGYPTIAN INITIATIVE FOR PERSONAL RIGHTS, Cairo, Egypt
Board Member, 2004 – Present.
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL, Cambridge, MA
Fellow, Human Rights Program, 2002 – 2003.
THE FORD FOUNDATION, Cairo, Egypt
Individual Grant Recipient (to establish Legal Aid Clinic, Birzeit University), 2000-2002
Publications Modern Egyptian Legal Historiography, in BOUTIVEAU & MAUGIRON, EDS., EGYPT AND ITS LAWS (forthcoming: Spring 2010).
Law, Identity and Sodomy in Egypt: A Two Century Redux, JOURNAL OF THE EGYPTIAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (forthcoming: Fall 2009).
RESTLESS JURISTS COMPARED. THE CRITIQUE AND RECONSTRUCTION OF CONTRACT LAW THEORY IN THE US, FRANCE AND EGYPT, 1900 – 1968 (forthcoming: BRILL Academic Publishers, Fall 2009)
Islamic Legal Histories, 1 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST & ISLAMIC LAW 3 (2008)
On a Certain Queer Discomfort with Orientalism, 101 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 2007
The Closeted Comparative Lawyer: On How to Pass for Human-Rights-Material, 20 HARVARD HUMAN RIGHTS JOURNAL 41 (2007).
I heard it all before: Egyptian Tales of Law & Development, 27 THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY 833 (2006).
Scenes from a Ramallah Law School, 31 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LEGAL INFORMATION 330 (2003).
PUBLIC INTEREST LAWYERING: AN INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC ADVOCACY IN THE US COMPARED WITH PALESTINE (Birzeit University Publications: 2003) [in Arabic].
Privatizing Jerusalem, or an Investigation into the City’s Future Legal Stakes, 15 LEIDEN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 431 (2002).
Violent Jurisdictions: on the Fragmentation of Space under Oslo, ADALAH’S REVIEW (2002) [in English, Arabic & Hebrew].
The Origins of Comparative Law in the Arab World, or how sometimes losing your Asalah can be Good for you, in ANNELISE RILES, ED., RETHINKING THE MASTERS OF COMPARATIVE LAW (Hart Publishing: 2001).
Between Identity and Redistribution: Sanhuri, Genealogy and the Will to Islamise, 8 ISLAMIC LAW & SOCIETY JOURNAL 201 (2001).
Arbitration and the Third World: Bias under the Scepter of Neo-Liberalism, 41 HARVARD INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL 419 (2000).
Book Review: Lillich, Richard B. and Charles N. Brower (eds). International Arbitration in the 21st Century: Towards ‘Judicialisation’ and Uniformity? New York: Transnational Publishers, 1994, 3 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 574 (1998).
NON-ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
Borg el-Amal/Tower of Hope, Accompanying Arabic/English text on “Borg El-Amal,” an in-situ construction and sound installation by Lara Baladi, Grand Prize, 11th Cairo International Biennale (January 2009).