Background

Wadie Said is a graduate of Princeton University and the Columbia University School of Law, where he served as an articles editor of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.

Prior to joining the faculty at the University of South Carolina, he was a visiting professor in the Law and Society Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an assistant federal public defender in the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Middle District of Florida, where he represented one of the defendants in U.S. v. Al-Arian, a complex terrorism conspiracy case. Upon graduation from law school, he served as law clerk to Chief Judge Charles P. Sifton of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and as a litigation associate in the New York office of Debevoise and Plimpton, where he helped coordinate the firm's pro bono political asylum program.

Said’s scholarship analyzes the challenges inherent in terrorism and national security prosecutions, covering such topics as coercive interrogation, the use of informants, law enforcement discretion and extraterritorial jurisdiction, sentencing, expert evidence, and the ban on providing material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations. His book, Crimes of Terror: The Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions, a comprehensive legal analysis of the criminal terrorist prosecution in the United States, was published by Oxford University Press in 2015, with the paperback edition released in early 2018. He teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, immigration law, and seminars on international human rights law and counterterrorism.

Said is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and serves on the Board of Editors of Amerasia Journal. He also served on the Executive Committee of the AALS Section on National Security Law from 2017 to 2019.

Teaching

• Counterterrorism (LAWS 858)
• Criminal Law (LAWS 524)
• Criminal Procedure (LAWS 547)
• Immigration Law (LAWS 627)
• International Human Rights Seminar (LAWS 812)

Scholarship

• Race and Politics in International Criminal Law: Case Studies from the Arab World, Race, Racism and International aw: Critical Race Theory in Context (Carbado, Crenshaw, Desautels-Stein, & Thomas, eds.) (forthcoming 2022/2023)
• American Domestic Counterterrorism Law and the Arab World, inOxford Handbook on International Law and the Arab World(Syed & Skouteris, eds.) (forthcoming 2022)
• Federal Terrorism Laws: Material Support Laws and the War on Terror, 27Mich J. of Race & L. ___ (forthcoming 2022)(solicited commentary on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks)
• The Destabilizing Effect of Terrorism in the International Human Rights Regime, 66 UCLA L. Rev.1800 (2021)
• Empire, Emergency, and International Law, 25 Journal of Conflict and Security Law 599(2020) (book review)
• Terrorism Prosecutions, Material Support, and Islamophobia, 40Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East243 (2020)
• Law Enforcement in the American Security State, 2019Wisconsin L. Rev. 822(2019)
• Crimes of Terror: The Legal And Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions (Oxford 2015; paperback, with updated preface, 2018)
• Limitless Discretion in the Wars on Drugs and Terror, 89 Univ. Colo. L. Rev. 93 (2018)
• Sentencing Terrorist Crimes, 75 Ohio St. L.J. 477 (2014)
• Constructing the Threat and the Role of the Expert Witness: A Response to Aziz Rana’s Who Decides on Security?, 44 Conn. L. Rev. 1545 (2012) (invited)
• The Message and Means of the Modern Terrorist Prosecution, 21 Transnat’l L. & Contemp. Probs. 175 (2012) (invited)
• Humanitarian Law Project and the Supreme Court’s Construction of Terrorism, 2011 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 1455 (2011)