Advisory Board

Haider Hamoudi

Professor Hamoudi received his B.Sc. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993, with a double major in Physics and Humanities with a Near Eastern Studies Concentration. He was a member of the Physics Honor Society, Sigma Pi Sigma, and a Burchard Scholar for Excellence in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 1996, Professor Hamoudi received his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar; he received a doctorate from Columbia several years later. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Constance Baker Motley in the Southern District of New York, then worked as an Associate at the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton until 2003.

Thereafter, Professor Hamoudi went to Iraq and acted as both a legal advisor to the Finance Committee of the Iraq Governing Council and a Program Manager for a project managed by the International Human Rights Law Institute of DePaul University School of Law to improve legal education in Iraq. Professor Hamoudi continues to advise the Iraqi government, primarily through the Iraq Mission at the United Nations. Professor Hamoudi's scholarship focuses on commercial law, Islamic law, and the intersection of the two in the contemporary era. He has written for numerous law reviews, spoken at conferences sponsored by the MacMillan Center at Yale University, the American Association of Law Schools and the New York City Bar Association, and given interviews to various news organizations including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour Online and the New York Law Journal. Professor Hamoudi is also the author of a blog on Islamic Law entitled Islamic Law in Our Times.

As someone who has spent years working with Iraqi universities, Professor Hamoudi is committed to ensuring that talented Iraqis receive the best education available. He joined RFI because he believes this organization will best help realize such a vision.

Feisal Istrabadi

Ambassador Istrabadi focuses his research on the processes of building legal and political institutions in countries in transition from dictatorship to democracy. He brings a mulit-disciplinary approach to studying the emergence of constitutionalism in such societies, including questions of timing and legitimacy, issues of transitional justice, and the political and cultural factors which influence the process of democratization. Ambassador Istrabadi lectures often at universities and think tanks on Iraq-related issues. He appears frequently in national and international media.

Prior to his diplomatic appointment, Ambassador Istrabadi served as a legal advisor to the Iraqi Minister for Foreign Affairs during the negotiations for U.N. Security Council resolution 1546 of June 8, 2004, which recognized the reassertion by Iraq of its sovereignty. He was also principal legal drafter of Iraq's interim constitution, the Law of Administration of the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period, and principal author of its Bill of Fundamental Rights. Before contributing to the reconstruction of Iraq, Mr. Istrabadi was a practicing trial lawyer in the United States for 15 years, with approximately 70 civil trials in federal and state courts, focusing on civil rights, employment discrimination, and constitutional torts. He also served a Senior Legal Fellow for Legal Reform and Development in the Arab World at the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University's College of Law in Chicago.