Prashant Sabharwal

Biography

Dr Prashant Sabharwal is a Lecturer in Law at Keele University whose education and career have spanned both constitutional law scholarship and work at two international courts. He joined the School in 2022, specialising in European and Comparative Constitutional Law, and combines academic expertise and international legal practice.

Educated in both the humanities and the law, Prashant holds a joint BA/MA from the University of Hanover in English Literature, American Studies, and Political Science, followed by an LLB from the University of Leicester. Called to the Bar of England & Wales by the Inner Temple in 2008, he went on to earn an LLM in European Law from Leiden University, where his thesis examined the role of the UK’s European Union Act 2011 within the EU’s constitutional framework. His doctoral research, completed at Maastricht University in 2022, analysed how the constitutional courts of Germany, the UK, and France responded to the European Court of Justice’s primacy doctrine. Alongside his research, Prashant lectured on constitutional law at Maastricht University and also led the Comparative Constitutional Law module at University College Maastricht. These experiences prepared him well for the leadership of the Constitutional Law module in Keele until 2025.

Beyond the university, he has clerked for the British judge at the International Criminal Court during its first completed war crimes trial and interned at the European Court of Justice. Prashant teaches with an emphasis on intellectual curiosity and comparative insight, drawing on his multilingual background — fluent in English, German, and Hindi, near-fluent in French, and conversant in Spanish and Urdu, whilst passively understanding conversational Dutch.

Research and scholarship

Prashant has offered legal commentary on the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union and has presented his research on constitutional law at international conferences in Maastricht, Melbourne, Seoul, and Madrid — most recently speaking in the Spanish capital on the role of constitutional courts in an era of populist challenge.

His work is driven by a fascination with how democracies hold together under pressure: from the authority of Europe’s highest courts and the politics of judicial appointments, to the place of referendums in representative systems and the responsible use of emergency powers. Prashant welcomes thoughtful, well-reasoned PhD supervision requests in his areas of expertise, particularly (Comparative) Constitutional Law and EU Institutional Law.

Teaching

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