text: Mehdi J. Hakimi is the Executive Director of the Rule of Law Program and Lecturer at Stanford Law School. His research focuses on international law, comparative law, and global development. Mehdi has managed multiple international development initiatives, and has served as a subject matter expert on comparative and foreign law issues in various jurisdictions. His work is published by leading scholarly journals at Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, Duke, Georgetown, Northwestern, Tufts, and others. He has been cited and quoted in major judicial decisions, government reports and policy documents, academic literature, and popular media outlets. Mehdi is an LL.M. candidate at Harvard Law School.