This talk will explore recent changes to the Iranian criminal law code. It examines the internal critiques that led to legislative change in a system premised on the notion – in the abstract – of unchanging, divine law. What are the processes and mechanisms and impetus for change after a 30 year experiment in Islamic government since the 1979 Revolution?

Intisar A. Rabb is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a director of its Islamic Legal Studies Program. She also holds an appointment as a Professor of History at Harvard University and as a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.  She teaches in areas of Islamic law and comparative law,  legislation and theories of statutory interpretation, and criminal law. Prior to joining Harvard, she has served as an Associate Professor at NYU Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and at NYU Law School, as an Assistant Professor at Boston College Law School, and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas L. Ambro of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She was named a 2010 Carnegie Scholar for research on issues of religious law reform through processes of "internal critique" in the Muslim world. She has published on Islamic law in historical and modern contexts, including a forthcoming book on Doubt in Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press), an edited volume, Law and Tradition in Classical Islamic Thought (with Michael Cook, Asma Sayeed et al., Palgrave 2013), and numerous articles on Islamic constitutionalism, Islamic legal maxims, and the early history of variant readings of the Qurʾān. She received a BA from Georgetown University, a JD from Yale Law School, and an MA and PhD from Princeton University. She has conducted research in Egypt, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere.

Cost : Free and open to the public.

international.ucla.edu/cnes

Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies, Critical Race Studies Program at UCLA School of Law