Adeel Hussain is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies. He holds two state examinations in law from Germany and was admitted to the Frankfurt bar. He also earned a Master’s and PhD from the University of Cambridge, where he subsequently qualified as a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales.
He is the author of Law and Muslim Political Thought in Late Colonial North India (Oxford University Press, 2022), Revenge Politics and Blasphemy in Pakistan (Oxford University Press, 2022), Carl Schmitt’s European Jurisprudence (Nomos, 2021), and Nehru: The Debates that Defined India (Harper, 2021).
Before joining NYU, Hussain was an Assistant Professor of Legal and Political Theory at Leiden University. He also clerked at the Court of Appeals in Frankfurt and held Senior Research Fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law.
Courses Taught
One of the most significant global challenges humanity faces today is the fair distribution of justice to individuals and groups. Many nation-states are struggling to curb discrimination based on race, religion, and gender, amongst others, with legal activists pointing towards the proper implementation of the 'rule of law' as a potential solution to humanity's woes. But what do we mean by the rule of law and can this system bring about these desired transformations? In order to help resolve this question, this course turns to Empire, the political structure under which people have lived for much of human existence and where debates around justice, order, and the rule of law first entered the modern political canon. Our course will further explore the role of law in the framework of imperial expansion and the possibilities and limitations of a rules-based society for imperial subjects. Employing a historical, political, economic, sociological, and legal lens, we will begin by analyzing the different dimensions through which law altered and was shaped by social behavior. Our emphasis will be on British imperialism during the nineteenth and twentieth century. We will link particular colonial legal institutions like prisons, police, and court cases to social life and, amongst other themes, analyze the role of religion, mainly Muslim thought in South Asia, race and class, gender and family, property and criminal law, as well as labor and the market.
Previously taught: Spring 2023, Fall 2023
This course appears in...
Core Curriculum > Islamic Studies
Core Curriculum > Structures of Thought and Society
Majors > History > Indian Ocean World
Majors > Legal Studies
The history of Western law is that of the two Romes, of the Papacy and law - papatus and imperiatus. It is a narrative of codification and the books of law, of scriptural texts and the casuistry that they generate. The first moment of legal study is that of inaugural texts and collections, of sovereignty, its representation and its textual delegation. The course will introduce the hierarchy of sources of law, the process of enacting law, the concepts of norm and rule, and then the plural regime of legal interpretation of sources, the hermeneutics of practice. Beginning with the concept of the code, the course will proceed to the topics of statutory interpretation, systems of precedent, and forensic rhetoric in distinct substantive legal disciplines. As the English legal sage Sir Edward Coke put it, inevitably in Latin, nemo nascitur artifex - no one is born a lawyer. To this end, the methods course will also entail and be supported by a vigorous legal writing and research program.
Previously taught: Fall 2 2016, Fall 1 2017, Fall 1 2018, Fall 1 2019, Fall 1 2020, Fall 1 2021, Fall 1 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 1 2023, Spring 1 2024, Fall 1 2024
Spring 1 2025;
7 Weeks Pavlos Eleftheriadis
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TR 15:35 - 18:15
Taught in Abu Dhabi
This course appears in...
Majors > Legal Studies
Common law has for the best part of half a century been a part of European Union law and common law has thus, through international and European links, reattached to its historical and linguistic roots in civil law. The study of substantive law begins with the division, inaugurated in classical Rome, between persons, actions and things. Law operates either in personam, or in rem, through the person or the thing. The study of law thus begins with the concept of subjective right and the law of persons, the framework of citizenship and the definition of the Constitution. Public law, the separation of powers, the legal framework of criminal law and other regulatory domains, and particularly the administration of justice, and the professional responsibility of lawyers, fall within this classification. The domain of private law divides into the basic disciplines of Contract, Tort, and Property. The links from these basic divisions to Commercial, Environmental, and Intellectual Property law will be tracked and framed. NOTE: This course may be replaced by LAW-UH 2011 or LAW-UH 2123.
Previously taught: Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 1 2024
This course appears in...
Majors > Legal Studies
Minors > Legal Studies
In this seminar forum under the guidance of a legal studies faculty member and in the academic community of the seminar participants, students identify a discrete legal text, case, or issue (or several thereof), and then engage in critical analysis from not only legal but also from philosophical, cultural, social, economic, religious, and ethical perspectives. While identifying the question(s), students undertake requisite research and begin drafting a senior thesis.
Prerequisite: Declared Legal Studies major and senior standing
Previously taught: Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024
Spring 2025;
14 Weeks Adeel Hussain
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R 18:30 - 20:30
Taught in Abu Dhabi
This course appears in...
Majors > Legal Studies
Minors > Legal Studies
On the basis of the work developed in the Capstone Seminar, students write a senior thesis, a significant paper that is intended as the culmination of the legal studies curriculum. During the Capstone Project, the student takes fundamental responsibility in meeting the challenge to contribute to knowledge, reframe conventional approaches, and/or create something new. At the end of the Spring semester, each student will present her/his thesis before a panel of three faculty members.
Prerequisite: LAW-UH 4000
Previously taught: Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024