Hamid Khan

Hamid M. Khan is a Senior Program Officer of the Rule of Law Center for the United States Institute of Peace where he works on rule of law issues for Afghanistan and is a specialist in the field of Islamic law (Shari'ah). Previously, Khan worked as Rule of Law Adviser in USIP's Kabul office. Prior to his work at USIP, Khan served as Postdoctoral Fellow for Stanford Law School's Afghanistan Legal Education Project where he directed the legal education efforts at the American University of Afghanistan, and later, served as an international observer for the 2010 Afghan parliamentary elections in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Khan, an adjunct professor of Islamic law at the University of Colorado Law School, is a former visiting professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Wyoming and former member of the ABA International Section's Committee on Islamic Finance. He lectured on Islamic legal matters around the world including before the U.N. Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO), the Italian Institute for Higher Criminal Sciences (ISISC), Stanford Law School, Northwestern Law School, Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver, the Lahore University of Management Sciences of Pakistan, and served as an advisor to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and to NATO/ISAF on issues of Islamic law, counterinsurgency, and empowering women under Islamic law and theology.

During his time in private legal practice, Khan, in part, served as counsel of record for five detainees held at the U.S. Naval Facility at Guantanamo Bay and in efforts to defend the rights of the mentally ill in Colorado. Khan, a former Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Colorado, also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Terrence L. O'Brien, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. During law school, Khan served as both Articles Editor and Symposium Editor for The Michigan Journal of International Law and in the U.S. Secretary of Defense's Legal Honors Program at the Pentagon. Prior to law school, Khan, a 1997 Truman Scholar, also worked for the U.S. House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure, the office of U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson, the office of MP David Alton in the British House of Commons, the office of U.S. Representative Barbara Cubin, and was appointed to the Wyoming Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Khan received his B.S. in Political Science from the University of Wyoming and his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.