Asifa Quraishi
Assistant Professor of Law
E-mail: aquraishi@wisc.edu
Telephone: 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:
Comparative Law
Constitutional Law
Biography
Asifa Quraishi, a specialist in Islamic law and legal theory, joined the University of Wisconsin Law School faculty in Fall 2004. Professor Quraishi's expertise ranges from U.S. law on federal court practice to constitutional legal theory, with a comparative focus in Islamic law.
At the UW Law School, Quraishi is teaching a combination of core law school classes in Constitutional Law, and electives in Islamic law and jurisprudence.
Quraishi received her B.A. in Legal Studies from the University of California-Berkeley in 1988. In 1992, she received her law degree from the University of California-Davis, where she served as Senior Research Editor for the UC- Davis Law Review. She also earned an LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School, and an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Her professional experience includes serving as a judicial law clerk with Judge Edward Dean Price on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California and as the death penalty law clerk for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Asifa Quraishi made news in 2001 when she drafted a clemency appeal brief in the case of Bariya Ibrahim Magazu, who was sentenced to flogging for fornication in Zamfara, Nigeria. Quraishi is a founding member of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML) and the California group American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism (AMILA). She is an associate of the Muslim Women's League, and has served as past president and board member of Karamah: Muslim Women for Lawyers for Human Rights. She also served as an Islamic law and culture consultant for the JAG episode "The Princess and the Petty Officer."
Asifa Quraishi's recent publications (also available under "Publications" on this page) include:
- Interpreting the Qur'an and the Constitution: Similarities in the Use of Text, Tradition, and Reason in Islamic and American Jurisprudence, 28 Cardozo L. Rev. 67 (2006).
- No Altars: a Survey of Islamic Family Law in the United States, in Women's Rights and Islamic Family Law, Lynn Welchman, editor (Zed Books 2004), with co-author Najeeba Syeed-Miller.
- Her Honor: An Islamic Critique of the Rape Laws of Pakistan from a Woman-Sensitive Perspective, 18 Mich. J. Int'l L. 287 (1997).
- From a Gasp to a Gamble: A Proposed Test for Unconscionability, 25 U. C. Davis L. Rev. 187 (1991).
