Mohamed Arafa - Cornell Law School
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Mohamed Arafa
Adjunct Professor of Law
Contact
ma2252@cornell.edu
Assistant
Alina Androshchuk
Cornell Law School
aab263@cornell.edu
Address
Cornell Law School
G20K Myron Taylor Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-4901
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Biography
Mohamed ‘Arafa is a Professor of Law at Alexandria University Faculty of Law (Egypt) and an Adjunct Professor of Law & the Clarke Initiative Visiting Scholar at Cornell Law School. In June 2025, he has been hired by the United States Department of Justice, Fraud Section (FCPA Unit), Criminal Division, as a Legal Consultant and Expert Witness. In Summer and Fall 2025, he was teaching Comparative Law and Comparative White Collar Crimes as a Visiting Professor of Law at the Brazilian Institute of Education, Development and Research (IDP), Faculty of Law, in Brasília, Brazil. In 2023-2024, he was a Visiting Professor of Law at Chandigarh University The Institute of Legal Studies (UILS) in India (Fall 2024) and an Assistant Professor of Law at Prince Sultan University College of Law (Saudi Arabia). He is an affiliate faculty at the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers University School of Law. In 2022-2023, he was a Visitor-in-Law & the ELEOS Justice Visiting Scholar at Monash University Faculty of Law in Australia. From 2012-2020, he was a Visiting Adjunct Professor of Law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law (Indianapolis). In 2021, he was a Visiting Professor of Law at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (Lebanon). Between 2016-2019, he served as a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Brasília Faculty of Law (Brazil). He received his LL.B. from Alexandria University (2006), his LL.M. from the University of Connecticut School of Law (2008), and his SJD (Doctorate) from Indiana University (2013).
His teaching and scholarship focus on criminal law, white-collar crimes, human rights law, Islamic law, transitional justice, international & comparative law, and Middle Eastern law. His scholarship appeared/forthcoming in the
Yale Journal on Regulation, Cornell Journal of International Law, Seattle Law Review, Indiana International & Comparative Law Review, Cardozo Journal on Equal Rights and Social Justice, George Mason Civil Rights Law Journal, Marquette Law Review, Indiana Journal of World Philosophies, Willamette Journal of International Law & Dispute Resolution, Southern Illinois Law Journal, California Western Journal of International Law, Southwestern Journal of International Law, Dartmouth Law Journal, Barry Law Review, New England Law Review, Arizona S. Law Review, Baltimore Journal of International Law, Florida C. Law Review, New South Wales Law Review,
Oxford, Cambridge, Springer, Routledge, and Edward Elgar. He is a frequent contributor to "JURIST" Academic Legal Commentary at Pittsburgh Law School; the American Society for Comparative Law Blog; and the Religion and Global Society Blog at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Recently he edited
"Perceptions and Misconceptions of Donald Trump"
(NOVA New York 2022). In 2018, he edited the Encyclopedia of the Comparative Religion Collection by Time TellerBooks™ (California)
"The Koran (Al-Qur’an): Arabic-English Bilingual Edition with an Introduction by Mohamed A. ‘Arafa."
His upcoming Book
"Systemic Racism and Transitional Justice"
(w/Antoni Ninet) is scheduled to be out by Springer in 2026.
Professor ‘Arafa has taught/spoken in Canada (Waterloo University), Australia (Melbourne University; Monash University; Queensland University; New South Wales University & Bond University), India (Symbiosis Law School & Christ University), Europe at the UN Vienna International Center (Vienna), Northumbria University Law School; Manchester University Law School (United Kingdom), Milan University; Parma University; Bologna University, and Napels University (Italy). Also, he taught at the University of Rijeka (Croatia), Sorbonne University Law School Paris I (France), the University of Groningen (Netherlands), and Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia). While in Brazil, he taught at the Catholic University of Brasília; the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul; the Federal University of Bahia (Salvador), and the Federal University of Paraná. In the United States, he spoke at Harvard Law School, Cornell Law School, Texas University Law School (Austin), George Washington University Law School, Georgetown University Law Centre, University of Chicago, University of Illinois, University of Connecticut Law School, Pittsburgh Law School, Southwestern Law School, Albany Law School, Ohio State University Law School, Creighton Law School, California Western Law School, Valparaiso Law School, Indiana University (McKinney & Maurer Law Schools), Wayne State Law School, Rutgers Law School, George Mason Law School, Case Western Reserve Law School, Toledo University, Texas A&M University, Western New England Law School among others. He spoke/taught in many Arab countries, as Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. From 2015-2018, he served as the Managing Editor of the
Arab Law Quarterly
(London) and currently he serves on the editorial board of the
LexisNexis Journal of Law in the Middle East.
Mohamed speaks Arabic (native), English (fluent), French (conversant), and Brazilian Portuguese (beginner).
LL.B., Alexandria University Faculty of Law, 2006
LL.M., University of Connecticut School of Law, 2008
J.S.D., Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, 2013
“False Spring: Deep Corruption and Protecting the Régime”, 56 _ Cornell Int’l L. J (forthcoming 2024)
“Systemic Racism and Transitional Justice” (Springer 2024) (Book with Antoni A. Ninet)
“Bridging the Gap: Corruption and Bribery Under the Umbrella of the United States National Law and International Law”, 31 Willamette J. Int’l L. & Dispute Resolution 1 (forthcoming 2024)
“Feeding the Cats: The Corruption Conundrum in the Failed Arab Spring-Egypt”, Southern Illinois U. L. J _ (forthcoming 2024)
“Corporations Must Shape a Better Globe or Risk Being Left Behind: Anti-corruption Action as CSR” in CSR, Sustainability, Ethics, and Governance (Springer 2024)
“Islamic Policy of Environmental Conservation: 1,500 Years Old –Yet Thoroughly Modern”
in
The Cambridge Handbook of Islam and Environmental Law (forthcoming 2024)
“Capital Punishment in Egypt”
in
Companion to Capital Punishment & Society (Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2023)
“Rule by Law (Rule of Man): Egypt’s Stabs the Rule of Law”
in
Revival of the Rule of Law (Intersentia Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2023)
“The Egyptian Criminal Justice System in a Nutshell” (Edward Elgar, 2023)
“Rethinking the Tales of the
Shārīe
: God is Not a Juristic Person, But the Mosque Is”, 29 Southwestern J. Int’l L. 1 (2023)
“Does
Shāri
e‘
(Islamic) Law Need Saving?” Ind. U. J. World Philosophies (2023)
“Sacred Corporate Law” 45 Seattle University Law Review 1 (2022) (with Giancarlo Anello & Sergio Gramitto)
“Islam and Democracy: Helping to Appreciate the Nuance and Complexity of Religious Legal Systems” 26 Barry Law Review 1 (2021) (with Massimo Campanini)
“Dreams without Illusions: The Bureaucratic Cholesterol, Administrative Corruption and the Future of a Real Democratic Middle East” 53 New England Law Review (2021)
“Procedural Islamic Criminal Justice in Terms of Human Rights: Beyond the Zero-Sum Game” 1 LexisNexis Journal of Law in the Middle East 1 (2021)
“Case 8/1996 (Egypt)”
in
Max Plank Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press 2018)
“The Tale of Post-Arab Spring in Egypt: The Struggle of Civil Society against a Janus-Faced State” 27 Indiana International & Comparative Law Review 43 (2017)
“Gender Equality in the Arab and Muslim World: Whiter Post-revolutionary Egypt?” (Routledge 2017)
“Judicial Corporal Punishment in the United States?! Lessons from Islamic Criminal Law for Curing the Ills of Mass Incarceration” 25 Indiana International & Comparative Law Review 3 (2015) (with Jonathan G. Burns)
“After the Revolution: Egypt’s Changing Forms of Corruption” 2 Baltimore Journal of International Law (2014) (with M. Patrick Yingling)
LAW 7157 Comparative Middle Eastern Law: Contemporary Issues
LAW 6649 Anticorruption Laws: Rule of Law, Practice, and Public Policy
Cornell Law School Legal Studies Research Paper Series on SSRN
View a collection of peer-reviewed research by Cornell Law School faculty.
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