Prof. Mohammad Fadel
Professor & Former Canada Research Chair for the Law and Economics of Islamic Law (2006-16)

Jackman Law Building
Room J484
78 Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C5   

Tel.: 416-946-0589

Mohammad H. Fadel is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Law, which he joined in January 2006. Professor Fadel wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on legal process in medieval Islamic law while at the University of Chicago and received his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Fadel was admitted to the Bar of New York in 2000 and practiced law with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York, New York, where he worked on a wide variety of corporate finance transactions and securities-related regulatory investigations. Professor Fadel also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and the Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Professor Fadel has published numerous articles in Islamic legal history and Islam and liberalism.

Education
B.A. - University of Virginia (1988)
Ph.D. - University of Chicago (1995)
J.D. - University of Virginia (1999)
Academic appointments
Cross-appointed in the Department of Religion and the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
Awards and distinctions
Canada Research Chair (2006, 2011)
Selected publications

"Maṣlaḥa as “Flourishing” and Its Place in Sunnī Political Thought", (2022) Journal of Islamic Ethics. 1-31. DOI: 10.1163/24685542-12340085

"Muslim Modernism, Islamic Law, and the Universality of Human Rights", 36 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 713 (2022).

“DNA Evidence and the Islamic Law of Paternity in Light of Maqāṣid  al- Sharīʿa” , The Muslim World, Special Issue: Family Structure in the wake of Genetic and Reproductive Technologies in the Muslim World, Vol. 112, Issue 3, Summer 2022, pp. 311-323.

"The Challenges of Islamic Law Adjudication in Public Reason", in S. Langvatn, M. Kumm, & W. Sadurski (Eds.), Public Reason and Courts (Studies on International Courts and Tribunals, pp. 115-142). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. doi:10.1017/9781108766579.006.

"The True, the Good and the Reasonable: The Theological and Ethical Roots of Public Reason in Islamic Law" (2008) 21:1 Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 5.

"Public Reason as a Strategy for Principled Reconciliation: The Case of Islamic Law and International Human Rights" 8(1) Chicago Journal of International Law 1 (Summer 2007).

"Back to the Future: The paradoxical Revival of Aspirations for an Islamic State," 14(1) Review of Constitutional Studies (2009).

"Political Liberalism, Islamic Family Law and Family Law Pluralism: Lessons from New York on Family Law Arbitration," in Marriage and Divorce in a Multi-Cultural Context: Reconsidering the Boundaries of Civil Law and Religion, ed. Joel Nichols, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

"Muslim Reformists, Female Citizenship and the Public Accommodation of Islam in Liberal Democracy," Politics and Religion, 5 (2012), 2–35. (link to Journal)

Research areas
Business Corporations
Economic Analysis of Law
Family Law
International Law
Islamic Law
Law and Globalization
Political Philosophy and Theory
Securities Regulation