Zaid Deva

Zaid is a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of Law and his doctoral thesis examines the federal imaginaries of state and state sovereignty in the Indian constitution-making project.

Zaid completed his undergraduate law degree at Gujarat National Law University, India, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Student Law Review and Managing Editor of the Law and Society Review. He subsequently pursued an LLM at the SOAS University of London, graduating with Distinction overall and in his dissertation on constitution-making in challenging political environments. He then came to Oxford and completed an MPhil in Law on constitutional pluralism in India. 

Zaid’s professional background spans both legal practice and research. Prior to his DPhil, he practised before the Kashmir High Court and has also interned with a Judge of the Supreme Court of India and a former Additional Solicitor General. At Oxford, Zaid has served as a Lecturer at Trinity College and is currently a Research Officer with the Oxford Pro Bono Publico. He is interested in public law, international law, legal history, and political theory. 

Select Publications

1. 'Article 370' in Niraja Jayal, Aparna Chandra, and Gautam Bhatia (eds), Cambridge Companion to the Indian Constitution (Cambridge University Press 2026) [forthcoming] 
2. “The tyranny of the singular”: In Re Article 370 and the problem of Indian constitutional history, Vol. 10(1) Indian Law Review 89-105 (2026)
3. ‘Justifying Privacy: The Indian Supreme Court’s Comparative Analysis’ in M. P. Singh and Niraj Kumar (eds), The Indian Yearbook of Comparative Law 2018 (Springer Press 2019). 
4. ‘Article 370 judgment is a case of constitutional monism’ (The Hindu, 14 December 2023)