Shubhankar Dam

Shubhankar Dam is the Professor of Public Law and Governance at the University of Portsmouth School of Law, United Kingdom. Previously, he held academic positions at the Singapore Management University School of Law, the City University of Hong Kong School of Law, and Columbia University where he held the B. R. Ambedkar Chair. He has also been the James F. Fleming Chair Visitor at the Australian National University, Canberra, and has held visiting professorships and fellowships in Australia, Germany, and India. At Portsmouth, he is currently the Chairperson of the Faculty of Business and Law’s Athena Swan Committee, and a professorial member of the REF 2021 Committee. In 2020, he was appointed DRDC, and in that capacity directs the School of Law's doctoral programme. Professor Dam also acts an external PhD examiner for Asian and European universities.

Dam read for the BCL at the University of Oxford as a Felix Scholar, and completed his LLM from Harvard Law School as a Harvard University Dana Scholar. In 2004, he was a law clerk to the Chief Justice of India, Justice V. N. Khare, in the Supreme Court of India, New Delhi.

The winner of several teaching excellence awards (including the Most Promising, and Most Outstanding Teacher Award) and research grants, Dam's primary interests include law and governance in India, public law, common law reasoning, and legal ethics. He has been invited to present his works, among others, at the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, Yale Law School, Emory Law School, the Harvard-Stanford International Faculty Forum, Illinois-Princeton-UCLA Annual Comparative Law Workshop, and the Inaugural NUS Asian Comparative Law Workshop.

Research interests

Professor Dam’s research focuses on comparative public law and separation of powers – particularly, the migration of British parliamentary concepts to commonwealth jurisdictions, and executive authority. Drawing on empirical and analytical methods, he is studying how branches of government hold themselves internally accountable. His current works include a series of articles on the Supreme Court of India using empirical legal studies (law and economics approach), and monographs on executive legislation in parliamentary and presidential systems.

Dam has published over 40 articles in law reviews and peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. He is the author of Presidential Legislation in India: The Law and Practice of Ordinances (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2014, paperback, 2015). In January 2017, the Supreme Court of India extensively relied on the book to overturn long-settled constitutional doctrines in India, and make executive power more amenable to judicial scrutiny. Some of this research is archived here: Selected Works of Shubhankar Dam In addition, frequently writes on issues relating to law and governance in India, and his commentaries and op-eds have appeared in Qz.com, Scroll, Economic Times, Hindu, Indian Express, Express Tribune, Friday Times, Week and Newsweek among others.

Professor Dam supervises PhD work broadly in the fields of public law, comparative constitutional law, and legal remedies. His current doctoral students include Ahmed Nazeer (Constitutionalism in Maldives) and Ahmed Abubakar (Mass Tort and Legal Remedies). Prospective students interested in pursuing doctoral work at the University Of Portsmouth School Of Law are welcome to contact him or the Graduate School with their proposals.