Victor V. Ramraj

CAPI Director (2017 to present)

CAPI Chair in Asia-Pacific Legal Relations (2014 to present)

Victor V. Ramraj in Bangkok, 2019 — Victor above Victoria's inner harbour, 2022.

Dr. Victor V. Ramraj joined the University of Victoria as Professor of Law and CAPI Chair in Asia-Pacific Legal Relations in 2014, and in 2017 also assumed the role of CAPI Director. Previously, he spent sixteen years at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he twice served as the Faculty’s Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs. He was also twice seconded to the Center for Transnational Legal Studies (CTLS), a consortium of global law schools in London, where he served for one year as its Co-Director. Professor Ramraj holds five degrees from McGill University, the University of Toronto, and Queen’s University Belfast, served as a judicial law clerk at the Federal Court of Appeal in Ottawa and as a litigation lawyer in Toronto, and retains a non-practicing membership in the Law Society of Ontario. He has held visiting teaching appointments at Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), Kyushu University (Japan), and the University of Toronto.

His scholarly interests include comparative constitutional and administrative law, transnational regulation, emergency powers, and the history of and regulatory challenges arising from state-company relationships in Asia. He has organized numerous international conferences in Canada and Asia, and hosts CAPI's roundtable series on Southeast Asia in Global Context. Professor Ramraj is also the Principal Investigator on a multi-year Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarships - Advanced Scholars (QES-AS) funded research project, Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia, with collaborators in Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Thailand, and Vietnam.

**Description:** Ramraj leading the international contingent of conference participants at a three-day conference in Thimphu, Bhutan, in July 2019, which he organized in collaboration with colleagues from Jigme Singye Wangchuck School of Law as part of his umbrella project "Regulating globalization in South & Southeast Asia."

**Description:** Ramraj delivering opening remarks at the opening ceremony of the conference in Bhutan, attended by Bhutanese dignitaries including Her Royal Highness Princess Sonam Dechen Wangchuck, Prime Minister Lotay Tshering, the Leader of the Opposition Pema Gyamtsho, Chief Justice Dasho Tshering Wangchuk, and Chairperson of the National Council Tashi Dorji.

**Description:** Ramraj with UVic Faculty of Law colleague and CAPI Associate Supriya Routh on the publication of their edited volume commemorating the legal contributions of renowned Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen (November 2019).

**Description:** In collaboration with CAPI Senior Research Fellow and former Canadian diplomat Phil Calvert, Ramraj leads CAPI’s Southeast Asia in Global Context Roundtable Series that has brought dozens of high-profile cross-sector experts to campus for wide ranging discussions on topical issues in the region, such as this one in November 2017 exploring the relationship between Canada and Southeast Asia.

**Description:** Ramraj welcoming students of Kagoshima University, Japan, at the beginning of a week-long, online "Introduction to Canadian Law and Society" program that CAPI delivered to the group during the Covid-19 pandemic, in lieu of their annual in-person visit to UVic campus (February 2021).

**Description:** Ramraj hosting a public CAPI talk in September 2019, organized in response to massive civil unrest breaking out in Hong Kong in protest of proposed new extradition laws with mainland China. Cora Chan, Associate Professor of Law at The University of Hong Kong, provided commentary via remote video-link.

**Description:** Ramraj in Bangkok with students from his “Transnational Law in Theory and Practice” course, a three week intensive he taught as part of Chulalongkorn University’s LLM in Business Law in February 2020.

**Description:** Ramraj with his PhD student Ben Lawrence on the latter’s successful oral defence in December 2019. Ben is also a member of the wider network involved with the Ramraj's Regulating globalization in South & Southeast Asia (QES-AS) project.

Current major projects

Regulating Globalization in South & Southeast Asia

CAPI is facilitating a global community of young leaders to conduct interdisciplinary research on innovative governance and justice strategies to mitigate the harsher effects of economic globalization in South and Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia in Global Context

This roundtable series regularly convenes leaders from across academia, industry, and government and non-governmental organizations alike, to examine the pressing issues in Southeast Asia as they relate to regional and global affairs.

Previous projects

Transpacific Aviation Law and Policy Conference (8-9 October 2015)
Asia Desk Forum (15-18 April 2015)

Recent volumes and collections

Special Section on "Legal Pluralism and Globalization from the Himalayas to Southeast Asia" in the journal of Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis (2022)

cover of Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis journal

Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Context (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Amartya Sen and Law (Routledge, 2019)

Emergency Powers in Asia: Exploring the Limits of Legality (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

More books and edited volumes

Global Anti-Terrorism Law and Policy, second edition (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
Emergencies and the Limits of Legality (Cambridge: CUP, 2008; released in a paperback edition, 2012) (edited volume), 415 pp.
Fundamental Principles of Criminal Law: Cases and Materials (Singapore: LexisNexis, 2005), 694 pp. (co-authored/co-edited with Chan Wing Cheong and Michael Hor)
The Criminal Lawyer’s Guide to Extraordinary Remedies (Toronto: Canada Law Book, 2000), 223 pp. (co-authored with Brian J. Gover)

Articles and chapters (since 2010)

‘A Short History and Thematic Overview’ in Victor V. Ramraj, ed., Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 1-23 (co-authored with Matthew Little).
‘Pandemics and Emergency Powers in Asia’ in Victor V. Ramraj, ed., Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 135-148 (coauthored with Arun K. Thiruvengadam).
‘Lex Mercatoria, Legal Pluralism, and the Modern State through the Lens of the East India Company, 1600-1757,’ (2020) 40(2) Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (co-authored with Neilesh Bose), 277-290.
‘Democracy and Authoritarianism’ (Chapter 24) in Peter Cane et al., eds., Oxford Handbook of Comparative Administrative Law (Oxford: OUP, 2020).
‘Introduction; Sen and Law’ in C. Menkel-Meadow et al, eds., Amartya Sen and Law: Philosophers and Law (London/New York: Ashgate Publishing, 2019) (co-authored with C. Menkel-Meadow, S. Routh, and A.K. Thiruvengadam), 1-30.
‘International Institutional Bypasses and Transnational Non-State Regulation’ (2019) 10 Transnational Legal Theory 295-317.
‘Security and Human Rights after the Nationalist Backlash’ in Benjamin Goold and Liora Lazarus, eds., Security and Human Rights, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2019), 211-232.
‘The Elusive Quest for Precision in a Messy Pluralist Reality’ [review essay] (2017) 8 Transnational Legal Theory 1-8.
‘Transnational Non-State Regulation and Domestic Administrative Law’ in Susan Rose-Ackerman et al., Comparative Administrative Law, second edition (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2017), 582-97.
‘Constitutional Interpretation in an Age of Globalisation: Challenges and Prospects’ in Jaclyn Neo, ed., Constitutional Interpretation in Singapore: Theory and Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 341-62.
‘Prospects for Judicial Review of Transnational Private Regulation: Singapore and Canada’ (2016) 21 Tilburg Law Review 230-54.
‘Counter-Terrorism’s Engagement with Transnational Legality’ in David Jenkins et al., eds., The Long Decade: How 9/11 Has Changed the Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)
‘Constitutions and Emergency Regimes’ in Tom Ginsburg and Rosalind Dixon, eds., Comparative Constitutional Law in Asia (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2014)
‘Beyond the Courts, Beyond the State: Reflections on Caldwell’s “Chinese Constitutionalism and Horizontal Rights”’ (2013) 88 Chicago-Kent Law Review 93.
‘Emergency Powers’ in Thomas Fleiner, Cheryl Saunders, and Mark Tushnet, eds., Routledge Handbook on Constitutional Law (Routledge, 2012) (with M. Guruswamy)
‘Introduction’ in Ramraj et al, eds., Global Anti-Terrorism Law and Policy, second edition (Cambridge: CUP, 2012) (with K. Roach, M. Hor, and G. Williams), 1-16
‘The Impossibility of Global Anti-Terrorism Law?’ in Ramraj et al, eds., Global Anti-Terrorism Law and Policy, second edition (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 44-66
‘Senses of Sen: Reflections on Amartya Sen’s Ideas on Justice’ (joint review essay of Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice), (2012) 8(1) International Journal of Law in Context 155-178 [my contribution at 156-158] (with C. Arjona, A. Jamal, C. Menkel-Meadow, and F. Satiro)
‘Emergency Powers and Constitutional Theory’ (2011) 41(2) Hong Kong Law Journal 481-515
‘Constitutional Tipping Points: Sustainable Constitutionalism in Theory and Practice’ (2010) 1 (2) Transnational Legal Theory 191-220
‘Introduction: Emergency Powers in Asia’ in Victor V. Ramraj & Arun K. Thiruvengadam eds., Emergency Powers in Asia (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), 1-18
‘The Emergency Powers Paradox’ in Victor V. Ramraj & Arun K. Thiruvengadam eds., Emergency Powers in Asia (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), 21-55

In the news

“China’s zero-Covid policy will increasingly leave it — and Hong Kong, to the extent that it follows — isolated”

- Victor V. Ramraj on mainland China as the exception to loosening covid restrictions in Asia, via The New York Times, 23 March 2022

CAPI Director and Law Chair Victor V. Ramraj appointed an "Adviser to the co-chairs" of the federal government's new Indo-Pacific Advisory Committee | 9 June 2022

Recorded talks

Academic Perspectives on Research Security. Part of a series on research security hosted by University of British Columbia Research + Innovation (4 April 2022)
COVID-19 vaccines: intellectual-property challenges and transnational-legal opportunities. Hosted by the UVic Graduate Student Law & Society Research Group (9 April 2021)

Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts - Author-Meets-Readers. Hosted by UVic's Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) and Faculty of Law (25 March 2021).

Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts. Hosted by the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law at The University of Hong Kong (17 March 2021).

Commentary on the launch of the book "China’s National Security: Endangering Hong Kong’s Rule of Law?" Hosted by Hong Kong University Faculty of Law (28 September 2020).

Profile of CAPI China Chair Guoguang Wu
Profile of CAPI Jarislowsky Japan Chair Takahiro Endo