George Bisharat, Professor of Law
Courses Taught: Criminal Practice Clinic (SP 2008); Law of Middle East Societies (SP 2008); Criminal Law Theory Concentration Seminar (SP 2008); Islamic Law (SP 2007); Law & Social Anthropology Seminar (SP 2007)
Expertise: Criminal Law, Middle East Affairs (legal and political).
George Bisharat joined the Hastings faculty in 1991, after serving four years as a Deputy Public Defender for the City and County of San Francisco. He conducts the Criminal Practice Clinic and teaches Criminal Procedure, Law and Social Anthropology, and Law in Middle East Societies.
Professor Bisharat graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1983 and holds a B.A. in anthropology (UC Berkeley, 1975), an M.A. in history (Georgetown University, 1979), and a Ph.D. in anthropology and Middle East studies (Harvard University, 1987).
He has lived, studied, and traveled throughout the Middle East and North Africa, with extended sojourns in Beirut, Tunis, Cairo, and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. His field of specialization is legal anthropology, the cross-cultural study of law, legal institutions, and modes of dispute processing. His study of the impact of Israeli occupation on the Palestinian legal profession of the West Bank, Palestinian Lawyers and Israeli Rule: Law and Disorder in the West Bank, was published in 1989. In recent years, Professor Bisharat has consulted with the Palestinian Legislative Council over the structure of the Palestinian judiciary, reforms in criminal procedure, and other aspects of legal development. He also is concerned with problems of social identity, ethnicity, race, and racism, and their interrelations with law and the legal system in the United States and abroad.
Professor Bisharat is married to Jaleh Bisharat, a businesswoman, and is the exceedingly proud father of a daughter, Valerie Shirin, and a son, Austin Rashid. His principal passions outside of work are wine, blues, and fly fishing for trout. |
