People of the Center

Advisory Board
Staff of the Center

The interdisciplinary team of scholars at the Center for Constitutional Democracy in Plural Societies has deep expertise in constitutional democracy work in addition to strong relationships with democratic reform leaders in Burma, Liberia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan. The CCDPS director and associate directors are Indiana University faculty or professionals with substantial experience in constitutional reform. Senior fellows and research fellows primarily come from the particular countries under study and have a commitment to furthering the cause of constitutional democracy in those countries. In addition, students pursuing PhD, SJD, or JD degrees play an integral role in the democratic reform movements and study the effect of constitutional ideas at work in the world.

Advisory Board

The Hon. Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Pamela Sumner Coffey: Program Manager
International Grants Program
Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
Edward DeLaney: Senior Partner
Delaney & Delaney
James F. Fitzpatrick: Senior Partner
Arnold & Porter
The Hon. David F. Hamilton: Judge
U.S. District Court
A. Yasmine Rassam: International Development Consultant
John D. Walda: President and CEO
National Association of College and
University Business Officers

Staff of the Center

David C. Williams Executive Director: Professor David C. Williams graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School after earning the Sarah Sears Prize for being first in his class. Williams then clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and taught at Cornell Law School before relocating to Indiana University in 1991. The John S. Hastings Professor of Law, Williams was named the Indiana University Distinguished Faculty Research Lecturer in 2003. He has also won the School's Wallace Teaching Award. Williams has written widely on constitutional design, Native American Law, the constitutional treatment of difference, and the relationship between constitutionalism and political violence. He is the author of The Mythic Meanings of the Second Amendment: Taming Political Violence in a Constitutional Republic (Yale University Press, 2003). Williams has been meeting extensively with members of the Burmese democratic movement. For the past five years, he has been involved in constitutional education and drafting with the Burmese democracy movement and is the primary author of the first constitutional commentary in Liberia (forthcoming).
Susan H. Williams Director: Professor Susan H. Williams graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served as the supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review and earned the John Sears Award for being second in her class. She clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and taught first at Cornell Law School. She is the Walter W. Foskett Professor of Law at Indiana, where she has taught since 1991. Williams is the recipient of the Office of Women's Affairs Distinguished Scholar Award (2000), the Wallace Teaching Award (2004), and a Presidential Citation for Service to the Profession from the Indiana State Bar Association (2003). She has been involved in judicial education on issues of feminist theory and critical race theory, both within Indiana and nationally. She has written numerous articles on constitutional law, particularly about freedom of speech and religion, and on feminist theory. Her book, Truth, Autonomy, and Speech: Feminist Theory and the First Amendment (New York University Press), was released in the spring of 2004. Williams has participated in several meetings with members of the Burmese democratic movement. For the past five years, she has been extensively involved in constitutional education and drafting with the Burmese democracy movement and has served as a constitutional advisor to the Women's League of Burma.
Judge David F. Hamilton Associate Director: Judge David Hamilton was appointed United States District Judge for the Southern District of Indiana in 1994. Judge Hamilton previously was a partner at Barnes & Thornburg, a private law firm in Indianapolis. He served as Counsel to the Governor of Indiana from 1989 to 1991. Judge Hamilton served as law clerk to Judge Richard D. Cudahy on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and is a founding member of the Sagamore Inn of Court in the American Inns of Court. He served as a member of the Indiana State Recount Commission from 1986 to 1987 and as chairman of the Indiana State Ethics Commission from 1991 to 1994.
Feisal Amin Rasoul Istrabadi Associate Director: Visiting faculty member Feisal Istrabadi served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and Deputy Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations from 2004-2007. His current research is focused on the processes of building legal and political institutions in countries transitioning from dictatorship to democracy. He is studying the emergence of constitutionalism in such societies, including issues of timing, legitimacy, and transitional justice. Ambassador Istrabadi also served as legal advisor to the Iraqi Minister for Foreign Affairs during the negotiations for U.N. Security Council resolution 1546. He was also principal legal drafter of Iraq's interim constitution, the Law of Administration of the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period, and principal author of its Bill of Fundamental Rights.
Hla-Phyu Aye (May Oo) Research Fellow: May Oo Aye fled Burma as a high school student following the crackdown of Burma's 8/8/88 popular revolt and took refuge in the Karen National Union-controlled areas from 1988 to 1993. In 1993, she came to the United States as a refugee and has been active in the exiles' efforts to help bring about change in Burma. As one of the founders of the Women's Affairs Department of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (in exile), May Oo was involved in human rights initiatives in Geneva and New York sponsored by the UNHCR, the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Commission of the Status of Women (CSW). She was elected President of the Karen National League (1997-2002), an umbrella network of five Karen organizations in North America, Australia and Thailand. As Director of Communications for the Washington-based Free Burma Coalition, May Oo co-authored a comprehensive report on the political situation in Burma and prospects for national reconciliation in that country (Common Problems, Shared Responsibilities, September 2004).
Jallah A. Barbu Research Fellow: Jallah A. Barbu graduated from Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law, the only law school in Liberia, at the top of his class as the only member of that class who graduated with honors. Barbu, a counselor-at-law and member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of Liberia, served as managing counsel for a law firm in Liberia until his election as general secretary of the Liberian National Bar Association where he re-established its secretariat and served in that position until he left for Indiana University in 2006. Barbu has participated in the drafting of several legislations in Liberia and is credited with heading two committees that drafted the act on freedom of information and the press and the mediation law of Liberia which is currently under review. He is pursuing an LLM degree in Constitutional Law at Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington, where he also serves as a fellow with CCDPS.
Ngun Cung "Andrew" Lian Research Fellow: Andrew Lian was awarded an SJD at the Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington. His dissertation was titled "Ethnopolitical Conflict, Constitutional Crisis, and Federalism Discords in Contemporary Burma." Formerly a revolutionary soldier resisting the military government, Lian fled Burma and earned his BA from Valparaiso University and his LLM from the School of Law. In 1996, he received a Burmese Refugee Scholarship from the United States Information Agency. Since 1988, Lian has been actively working with organizations such as the Chin National Front, the Chin Human Rights Organization, the Chin Forum, the Burma Fund, and the Burma Lawyers' Council. He has been a James J. Robinson Fellow for Graduate Legal Studies and an Earl Snyder Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University.
Blake Puckett Research Fellow: Blake Puckett is a PhD Student in Law & Social Science at the Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington, with a focus on legal reform efforts in post-Soviet Central Asia. Mr. Puckett graduated from Yale Law School in 1999 and subsequently worked in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan on educational reform, rule of law, and religious freedom issues. In 2003 he served as an Army Reserve Civil Affairs Office working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and in 2004-05 he served as the Assistant Army Attaché in Tashkent and Dushanbe. In addition to his work at the Center and as a Reserve Army Officer he is currently the Director of the ROTC Strategic Languages and Cultures Program at Indiana University.