Arvind Abraham
S.J.D. Candidate
aabraham at sjd.law.harvard.edu
Dissertation
Church, Temple & State: Law and Religion in India & The US
My dissertation is a comparative constitutional study of the American religious doctrine as enshrined in the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution, and the concept of ‘Constitutional Secularism’, which is part of the Basic Structure of the Constitution of India.
My project will examine the nature of the pluralism envisaged by the founders of the Indian Republic and how this conception has changed over the ensuing decades. It will also look at the purpose of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and how those concerns map onto those of the Indian framers. The project looks at the whether Establishment Clause doctrines can provide useful insights for Indian jurisprudence.
Fields of Research and Supervisors
- American Constitutional Law and History with Professor Michael J. Klarman, Harvard Law School, Principal Faculty Supervisor
- Comparative Constitutional Law and Methodology with Professor Vicki C. Jackson, Harvard Law School.
- Intellectual History of Indian Secularism with Professor Sugata Bose, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- American Religious Doctrine with Professor Andrew Koppelman, Northwestern University.
Additional Research Interests
- Comparative Constitutional Law
- Constitutional Law
- Legal History
- Law and Religion
- International Human Rights Law
Education
- Harvard Law School, S.J.D. Candidate
- Harvard Law School, LL.M. 2020
- NUJS, India., B.A LL.B. (Hons), 2017
Academic Appointments and Fellowships
- Teaching Fellow, Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School, Spring 2024
- Teaching Fellow, Constitutional Law: Separation of Powers, Federalism, and Fourteenth Amendment, Harvard Law School, Fall 2023
- Graduate Program Fellow, LL.M. Advisor, Harvard Law School, 2023-2024
- Graduate Program Fellow, LL.M. Advisor, Harvard Law School, 2022-2023
- Research Assistant to Justice Rosalie Abella, Harvard Law School, 2022-2023
- Research Fellow, Laws of Social Reproduction Project, King’s College London, 2021
- OPEN Fellow, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, 2021
- Research Fellow, International Postgraduate Research Program, Harvard Law School 2020-2021
Representative Publications
- “Essential Religious Practices Test and the First Amendment: A Comparative Analysis of the Free Exercise of Religion in India and the United States” in The Indian Yearbook of Comparative Law (M. John et al. eds. 2021)
Additional Information
- Languages: English (fluent), Malayalam (native)
Last Updated: December 4, 2023