Mohammad Shah Alam

Mohammad Shah Alam (14 October 1951 – 31 August 2020) was a chairman (acting) of Bangladesh Law Commission and founding father of Faculty of law, University of Chittagong. He was a former professor at the Department of Law, University of Rajshahi He was also a freedom fighter and academician. He is considered the pioneer of Clinical Legal Education movement in Bangladesh. He had written several books on international law, and constitutional law.

Early life and education Mohammad Shah Alam was born on October 14, 1951, in Munshiganj, part of Dhaka Division to Md. Sujatul Islam, a teacher, politician and social worker and Firoza Begum. He was born into a Muslim family of four brothers and one sister. He received his primary education at his village school in Munshigonj. He passed his matriculation and intermediate from Rajshahi Cadet College with distinction in 1968 and 1970 respectively. He briefly studied economics at University of Dhaka at the time of Bangladesh Liberation War. After that, he went to the former Soviet Union on government scholarship for higher studies and studying for ten years successfully obtained graduation, post-graduation and Ph.D. degrees from Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.

Career

His career journey started as assistant professor at Faculty of Law, University of Rajshahi in the early 1980s and after 10 years, in 1992, M Shah Alam joined as associate professor at University of Rajshahi. He is the founder Dean of the Faculty of Law and founder Chairman of Department of Law of University of Chittagong. In 1996, he became a full professor of Law and by joining as member of Bangladesh Law Commission, he also served as the acting chairman of the commission from 2010 to 2013. He was also an editor of Chittagong University Journal of Law. He was a Japan Foundation Fellow in 1995–96 at the Tokyo University Faculty of Law and a Senior Fulbright Fellow in 2001–2002 at the New York University School of Law.