Prashant Sabharwal

Biography

Dr Prashant Sabharwal joined the School of Law at Keele University as a Lecturer in Law in October 2022, specializing in European and Comparative Constitutional Law. Subsequent to his joint BA/MA (Magister) degree from the University of Hanover (Germany) in English Literature, American Studies and Political Science in 2003, Prashant embarked upon his legal studies at the University of Leicester, from where he graduated with an LLB in Law (Honours) in 2006.

Thereafter, he undertook the Bar Vocational Course and called to the Bar of England & Wales by the Inner Temple in 2008. Prashant completed his legal studies in the Netherlands: first, he obtained an LLM in European Law at Leiden University (LLM thesis: "By the People: The European Union Act 2011 and its role as a plebiscitary counterweight within the European Union’s constitutional framework") in 2014; thereafter, he wrote his doctoral thesis entitled "Conflict or Concord? The response of the national constitutional courts in Germany, the United Kingdom and France to the European Court of Justice’s primacy doctrine in the years 2005-2015 – and the Lessons to be Learnt", which he defended in early 2022 at Maastricht University. Prior to his appointment as a Lecturer in Law at Keele, Prashant worked at Maastricht University, first as a PhD Candidate (2016-2019) and then as a Lecturer (2019-2022). Besides academia, Prashant has also clerked for the United Kingdom judge at the International Criminal Court during its first completed war crimes trial and interned at the European Court of Justice.

At Maastricht, Prashant taught constitutional law subjects, notably Comparative Government (undergraduate) and European & National Constitutional Law (postgraduate), whilst also supervising a wide range of Bachelor Theses. From 2019 onwards, Prashant accepted an appointment to University College Maastricht, where he coordinated and taught the Comparative Constitutional Law module (2019-2022) to students specializing in the Humanities. Moreover, Prashant also taught Skills subjects such as Introduction to Law and Introduction to Legal Argumentation.

Besides his native languages English, German and Hindi, Prashant speaks French near-fluently (to C1 standard) and can understand conversational Spanish and Urdu.

Research and scholarship

Prashant has offered legal commentary on the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union from a legal perspective, for Maastricht University, as well as the Montesquieu Institute. He has also represented Maastricht at conferences in Melbourne and Seoul, presenting papers on European Constitutional Law and Comparative Public Law. Prashant takes a keen interest in the role of highest courts in Europe, the appointment processes to the judiciary of various jurisdictions, the role of referendums in representative democracies, as well as the use of emergency powers and constitutional mechanisms to promote the resilience of democratic principles. 

Teaching

In the 2022/2023 academic year, Prashant teaches Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and European Union Law.