Cem is the Managing Editor at the Program in Islamic Law. He graduated from Harvard Law School with an LLM in 2016 and earned his doctorate (SJD) from Harvard Law School in 2024. He clerked for Judge William G. Young of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts from 2023 to 2024 and will clerk for the Federal Court of Appeals starting in 2025. His research interests include American and comparative constitutional law, Islamic law, and its intersection with secular law. His scholarship has been published in the Yale Law Journal, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Syracuse Law Review, and the Journal of Islamic Law, among other outlets. He is currently co-authoring Afterlives of Constitutions, a forthcoming book with Harvard University Press that explores how constitutions continue to shape political and legal life after they have been formally replaced. A dual-qualified lawyer, Cem is admitted to practice law in New York and Istanbul.
Post History
Authored Works
- Commentary :: Did Republican Turkey Really Abolish the Ottoman Caliphate? The Curious Case of Law No. 431
- Commentary :: Kadijustiz in Turkish Constitutional Adjudication: Islamic Law as an Aversive Model?
- Commentary :: Religious Accommodation in an Assertively Secular Legal System: Mahr and the Turkish Case
- Commentary :: How Was Secularism Added to the Turkish Constitution? The Varying Rationales
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Noah Feldman on Law, Islam, and the Future of the Middle East
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Noah Feldman on Imposed Constitutions and Established Religion
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Noah Feldman on Islamic Constitutionalism in Context: A Typology and a Warning
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Noah Feldman on Imposed Constitutionalism
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Noah Feldman on The Democratic Fatwa
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Joseph Lowry on the Legal Hermeneutics of al-Shāfi‘ī and Ibn Qutayba
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Joseph Lowry on the First Islamic Legal Theory
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Joseph Lowry on the Prophet as Lawgiver and Legal Authority
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Joseph Lowry on Reading the Qur’an as a Law Book
- Islamic Law Lexicon :: Ḥadīth
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Noah Feldman on Constitutional Politics and Text in the New Iraq
- Scholarship in “Plain English”: Noah Feldman on Political Equality in Islam