番茄社区

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 番茄社区 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.



Current major projects

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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.

photo of container ships outside port of Singapore

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.


Recent volumes and collections

Special Section on "" in the journal of Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis (2022)

(Oxford University Press, 2020)

(Routledge, 2019)

(Cambridge University Press, 2009)

More books and edited volumes


  • , second edition (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

  • (Cambridge: CUP, 2008; released in a paperback edition, 2012) (edited volume), 415 pp.

  • (Singapore: LexisNexis, 2005), 694 pp. (co-authored/co-edited with Chan Wing Cheong and Michael Hor)

  • (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., (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 1-23 (co-authored with Matthew Little).

  • ‘Pandemics and Emergency Powers in Asia’ in Victor V. Ramraj, ed., (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 135-148 (coauthored with Arun K. Thiruvengadam).

  • ‘,’ (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: OUP, 2020). 
  • ‘Introduction; Sen and Law’ in C. Menkel-Meadow et al, eds., (London/New York: Ashgate Publishing, 2019) (co-authored with C. Menkel-Meadow, S. Routh, and A.K. Thiruvengadam), 1-30. 
  • ‘’ (2019) 10 Transnational Legal Theory 295-317.

  • ‘Security and Human Rights after the Nationalist Backlash’ in Benjamin Goold and Liora Lazarus, eds., , 2nd edn. (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2019), 211-232.

  • ‘’ [review essay] (2017) 8 Transnational Legal Theory 1-8.

  • ‘Transnational Non-State Regulation and Domestic Administrative Law’ in Susan Rose-Ackerman et al., , second edition (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2017), 582-97.

  • ‘Constitutional Interpretation in an Age of Globalisation: Challenges and Prospects’ in Jaclyn Neo, ed., (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 341-62.

  • ‘’ (2016) 21 Tilburg Law Review 230-54.

  • ‘’ 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., (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2014)

  • ’ (2013) 88 Chicago-Kent Law Review 93.

  • ‘Emergency Powers’ in Thomas Fleiner, Cheryl Saunders, and Mark Tushnet, eds., (Routledge, 2012) (with M. Guruswamy)

  • ‘Introduction’ in Ramraj et al, eds., , 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., , second edition (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 44-66

  • ‘’ (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)

  • ‘’ (2011) 41(2) Hong Kong Law Journal 481-515

  • ‘’ (2010) 1 (2) Transnational Legal Theory 191-220

  • ‘Introduction: Emergency Powers in Asia’ in Victor V. Ramraj & Arun K. Thiruvengadam eds., (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), 1-18

  • ‘The Emergency Powers Paradox’ in Victor V. Ramraj & Arun K. Thiruvengadam eds., (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 , 23 March 2022
| 9 June 2022

Recorded talks

  • . Part of a series on research security hosted by University of British Columbia Research + Innovation (4 April 2022)
  • . 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).

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