Huq, Aziz Z.

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Huq, Aziz Z.

PERSONAL:

Education: Graduated from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (summa cum laude), 1996; graduated from Columbia Law School (summa cum laude), 2001.

ADDRESSES:

Home— New York, NY. Office— Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law, 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th Fl., New York, NY 10013. E-mail— aziz.huq@nyu.edu.

CAREER:

Lawyer. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, New York, NY, clerk for Judge Robert D. Sack, 2001-02; Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, DC, clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 2003; Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law, New York, NY, associate counsel and Justice Program deputy director, c. 2004—. Columbia Law School Postgraduate Human Rights fellow, 2002.

AWARDS, HONORS:

John Ordronaux Prize, Columbia University, 2001.

WRITINGS:

(With Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr.)Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror, New Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals and journals, including Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, World Policy Journal, Constellations Journal, Himal Southasian, Legal Times, American Prospect, and Columbia Law Review. Essay and review editor of the Columbia Law Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Aziz Z. Huq is a lawyer. Graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill summa cum laude in 1996, Huq went on to study law in New York. He graduated from Columbia Law School summa cum laude in 2001. Upon graduation, he won the John Ordronaux Prize for having the highest grade point average in his graduating class. Huq spent 2001 and 2002 as a clerk for Judge Robert D. Sack of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, NY. In 2002 he was named a Columbia Law School Postgraduate Human Rights fellow, working with the International Crisis Group (ICG) while studying Afghanistan's constitutional reform. In October, 2003, Huq served as a clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, DC, for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Shortly after this, Huq began working at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law as associate counsel and the Justice Program's deputy director.

In addition to his work with constitutional reform in Afghanistan with the ICG, Huq worked with the organization with their projects on legal and constitutional reform in Nepal and in Pakistan. Huq also worked on human rights issues in Cambodia and Guatemala. While studying at Columbia Law School, he served as essay and review editor of the Columbia Law Review. In addition to this journal, Huq contributes to a number of periodicals and legal journals, including the Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, World Policy Journal, Constellations Journal, Himal Southasian, Legal Times, and American Prospect. In 2007 Huq wrote a book with Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr., on presidential abuse of power called Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror, detailing the gross abuse of powers and the circumventing of the Constitution's system of checks and balances that they see in the George W. Bush administration.

Reviews for the book were mostly positive. Robert Philbin, writing in the Nth Position, commented: "Schwarz and Huq outline a logical course of corrective actions they think necessary to rebuild the Constitution's checks and balances." He noted, however, that any new executive "will naturally not choose to renege powers accumulated by his or her predecessor," raising troubling issues of constitutional law and precedent. Philbin referenced warnings from the founding fathers on the dangers of presidents accumulating too much power. He said that the entire history of the United States, "from the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution onward, has become fundamentally menaced in the last half century, and it is not extreme for citizens to conclude the United States faces a critical impasse at this moment." Philbin called Unchecked and Unbalanced "an important, and disturbing book." Writing in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani criticized the book, noting that it "contains little new reporting and is heavily indebted" to various reporters' work, including that of Jane Mayer, James Risen, Eric Lichtblau, Dana Priest, and Charlie Savage. Kakutani conceded, however, that "the book serves as a valuable compendium and chronicle of the Bush administration's aggressive efforts to expand the power of the executive branch, providing a detailed account of the unilateral actions it has taken on matters ranging from torture policy to domestic surveillance." She called it "necessary reading for anyone interested in how those efforts by the Bush White House have tipped the constitutional system of checks and balances." Kakutani concluded that Huq and Schwarz "have done a powerful job of situating the actions of the current White House in perspective with the imperial presidency of Richard M. Nixon."