Sujit Choudhry

Sujit Choudhry is an Canadian citizen of Indian origin, lawyer, Rhodes Scholar^[2] and Cecelia Goetz Professor of Law,^[3] who is widely regarded as an expert in comparative constitutional law and comparative constitutional development. He is the incumbent Dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, the first person of Indian origin to hold the post.^[1][2] He founded the Center for Constitutional Transitions,^[4] reported to be the first of its kind, for the generation and dissemination of knowledge for building constitutions.^[5] He is a recipient of Trudeau Fellowship, Canadian equivalent of MacArthur award, one of the four Canadians to receive the fellowship in 2010.^[2]

Biography

Sujit Choudhry was born in New Delhi in 1970 as one of the two children of Nanda and Ushi, and moved to Canada when his parents migrated to that country. His father was a teacher of Economics at University of Toronto and his mother, a nursing teacher and they set their children on paths of academics (Sujit's brother, Niteesh, is a member of faculty at Harvard Medical School).^[7]

Choudhry had his early education in Toronto, graduated from the University of Toronto Schools, completed his premed at McGill University^[7] and, changing his focus, obtained law degrees from the University of Oxford and the University of Toronto. He earned his Masters degree from the Harvard Law School.^[8]

He is married and the couple has a son and a daughter.^[7]

Social involvement

University of California, Berkeley (1868)

Sujit Choudhry has been active in the society all through his career. Acting on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Transitions, he was involved in the Middle East affairs, first as an advisor to Libyan parliamentarians, and subsequently, as an associate of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) on projects on Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) constitutions and post Arab Spring executive-legislative relations. He has participated in symposia on Arab constitutionalism and current constitutional reforms in Turkey. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights cited Choudhry's work in its reports.^[5]

While teaching Juris Doctor and LLM students at the Constitutional Transitions Clinic,^[9] he led a student contingent to Tunisia,^[10] to present papers at the University of Tunisia and had meetings with high level politicians including the President, Mohamed Moncef Marzouki.^[5]

Choudhry has come up with several suggestions with regard to the Middle East and North Africa crises such as constitutional courts, regulation of political party finance, semi-presidentialism by way of constitutional reform and elimination of corruption from oil and gas sector by decentralization and reformation of the sector.^[5]

He has held high positions at many government and public agencies and has influenced public policies. In the medical field, he has acted as consultant to two public committees, the Romanow Commission and the Naylor Committee, the first assisting the Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada and the latter, advising the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health.^[8]

He was one of the World Bank delegates to Sri Lanka in support of Sri Lankan peace process. He has also chaired the Advisory Board of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario and sat on the Governing Toronto Advisory Panel which assisted the reformation of the structure of municipal governance in Toronto.^[8]

He has also appeared as counsel in two noted cases; Charkaoui security certificate case and the Guantanamo detainee cases of Khadr 1 and 2.^[11]

Positions held

Choudhry has served on many positions during his career.

Robarts Library, University of Toronto.

• Faculty Director of the Global Fellows Program, University of California^[5]
• Scholl Professor of Law, University of Toronto^[2]
• Associate Dean, University of Toronto^[2]
• Professor, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto^[8]
• Senior Fellow of Massey College^[8]
• Law Clerk to Chief Justice Antonio Lamer of the Supreme Court of Canada - 1996 to 1997^[8]
• Graduate Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Ethics and the Professions - 1998 to 1999^[8]
• Visiting Researcher at the Harvard Law School^[8]
• Member of the United Nations Mediation Roster^[2]
• Consultant to the World Bank Institute^[2]
• Consultant, constitutional transitions in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka^[2]
• Counsel of Record, the Supreme Court of Canada^[2]
• Member, Academic Advisory Committee to the Province of Ontario's Democratic Renewal Secretariat^[11]
• Consultant, Governing Toronto Advisory Panel, Municipal Government of Toronto^[11]
• Chairman, Advisory Board of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario^[11]
• Consultant, the Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada (the Romanow Commission)^[11]
• Consultant, the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health (the Naylor Committee)^[11]

Awards and recognitions

Sujit choudhry has received several recognitions such as:

• Rhodes Scholarship^[8]
• William E. Taylor Memorial Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC):^[8]
• Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship from Harvard University:^[8]
• Practitioner of the Year 2011, the South Asian Bar Association of Toronto^[2]
• Trudeau Fellowship^[2]

Books and publications

Sujit Choudhry has published books, over 70 articles, papers and reports on comparative constitutional law, detailing his studies on methods to convert civil war torn nations into peaceful democracies, with special emphasis on multi-racial, multi ethnic societies.^[2]

• Sujit Choudhry (2008). Constitutional Design for Divided Societies. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953541-5. 
• Sujit Choudhry (2008). Multinational Federations, Constitutional Amendment and Secession. 
• Sujit Choudhry (2006). The Migration of Constitutional Ideas. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521173476. 
• Sujit Choudhry (2006). Dilemmas of Solidarity: Redistribution in the Canadian Federation. Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0802094070. 
• Sujit Choudhry, Michael Pal (2007). Is every ballot equal? : visible-minority vote dilution in Canada. Institute for Research on Public Policy, Montreal. OCLC 246907471. 

He is presently working on a book for Oxford University Press, Oxford Handbook of Indian Constitutional Law in association with Pratap Bhanu Mehta.^[1]

References

External links

• on WorldCat
• Biography on JagranJosh
• Biography o Sify
• on GoodReads
• Reference on TVO.
• Reference on Mcleans
• News report
• on EDU Tech
• Sujit Choudhry talks about the newly formed Center for Constitutional Transitions at NYU Law