Galit Sarfaty
Associate Professor

78 Queen's Park
Room J340
Toronto ON
M5S 2C5

Tel.: (416) 978-4035
Email: galit.sarfaty@utoronto.ca

Galit Sarfaty is an Associate Professor of Law with tenure at the University of Toronto. She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Ph.D. and M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and an A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard University.

As a legal scholar and anthropologist, Professor Sarfaty analyzes the ways in which law and legal institutions operate in practice, including the transnational regulation of corporate human rights compliance in global supply chains, the role of corporate actors in international lawmaking, the culture of international organizations, and the use of quantitative regulatory tools in global economic governance.

Her research has been published in a book by Stanford University Press and several leading law journals, including the American Journal of International Law, Harvard International Law Journal, Law and Social Inquiry, Stanford Journal of International Law, University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, University of Toronto Law Journal, and Virginia Journal of International Law.

Professor Sarfaty previously served as Canada Research Chair in Global Economic Governance and Associate Professor at the Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia, as well as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to these positions, Professor Sarfaty was a Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Program on the Legal Profession and Human Rights Program, a Graduate Fellow at Harvard’s Center for Ethics, and a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Galit Sarfaty SSRN
Education
Ph.D. - Anthropology, University of Chicago
M.A. - Anthropology, University of Chicago
J.D. - Yale Law School
A.B. (summa cum laude) - Harvard University
Academic appointments
Canada Research Chair in Global Economic Governance (2013-2023)
Associate Professor, Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia (2017-2023)
Assistant Professor, Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia (2012-2017)
Assistant Professor, Department of Legal Studies & Business Ethics, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (2009-2012)
Other info

Other research areas include: Human Rights, Regulatory Governance, Transnational Business, Global Economic Governance, Law & Development

Selected publications

Books

Values in Translation: Human Rights and the Culture of the World Bank (Stanford University Press, 2012)

Articles, Essays, & Book Chapters  

“Supply Chain Governance at a Distance,” Law & Social Inquiry (forthcoming) (with Raphaël Deberdt).

"Crowdsourcing Compliance: The Use of WikiRate to Promote Corporate Supply Chain Transparency,” 17 Law & Ethics of Human Rights (forthcoming 2023)

“Corporate Data Responsibility,” in Big Data and Armed Conflict: Legal Issues Above and Below the Armed Conflict Threshold (Laura A. Dickinson & Edward Berg eds., Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2023)

“Corporate Actors as Translators in Transnational Lawmaking,” 115 American Journal of International Law (AJIL) Unbound (2021)

“Global Supply Chain Auditing,” in Cambridge Handbook of Compliance (D. Daniel Sokol & Benjamin van Rooij eds., Cambridge University Press, 2021), 977-988

“Toward an Anthropology of International Law,” in International Law as Behavior (Harlan G. Cohen & Timothy Meyer eds., Cambridge University Press, 2021), 128-157

“Supply Chains and Logistics,” in Routledge Handbook of Law and Society (Mariana Valverde et al., Routledge, 2021)

“Translating Modern Slavery into Management Practice,” 45 Law and Social Inquiry 1027-1051 (2020)

"An Anthropological Approach to International Economic Law," in Handbook on the Sociology of International Law (Moshe Hirsch & Andrew Lang eds., Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018)

"Can Big Data Revolutionize International Human Rights Law?” 39 University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 73 (2017)

"The Limitations of Supply Chain Disclosure Regimes," 53 Stanford Journal of International Law 1 (2017) (with Adam Chilton)

"Managing the Governance Gap," 67 University of Toronto Law Journal 655 (2017)

“Shining Light on Global Supply Chains,” 56 Harvard International Law Journal 419 (2015)

“Measuring Corporate Accountability Through Global Indicators,” in The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law (Sally Engle Merry, Kevin E. Davis, & Benedict Kingsbury eds., Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Book Review, 108 American Journal of International Law 362 (2014) (reviewing Gregory Shaffer ed., Transational Legal Ordering and State Change)

"Human Rights Meets Securities Regulation," 54 Virginia Journal of International Law 97 (2013)

"Regulating Through Numbers: A Case Study of Corporate Sustainability Reporting," 53 Virginia Journal of International Law 575 (2013) (selected for presentation at the 2012 Stanford-Yale-Harvard Junior Faculty Forum)

"Why Culture Matters in International Institutions: The Marginality of Human Rights at the World Bank," 103 American Journal of International Law 647 (2009) (winner of the 2010 Francis Deák Prize, awarded to a younger author for meritorious scholarship published in the American Journal of International Law)

"Measuring Justice: Internal Conflict over the World Bank's Empirical Approach to Human Rights," in Mirrors of Justice: Law and Power in the Post-Cold War Era (Kamari Clarke & Mark Goodale eds., Cambridge University Press, 2009)

"International Norm Diffusion in the Pimicikamak Cree Nation: A Model of Legal Mediation," 48 Harvard International Law Journal 441 (2007)

"Doing Good Business or Just Doing Good: Competing Human Rights Frameworks at the World Bank," in The Intersection of Rights and Regulation: New Directions in Sociolegal Scholarship (Bronwen Morgan ed., Ashgate Press, 2007)

Note, "The World Bank and the Internalization of Indigenous Rights Norms," 114 Yale Law Journal 1791 (2005)

Book Review, 30 Yale Journal of International Law 338 (2005) (reviewing Salman M.A. Salman & Siobhan McInerney-Lankford, The Human Right to Water: Legal and Policy Dimensions)

Book Review, 98 American Journal of International Law 398 (2004) (reviewing Mac Darrow, Between Light and Shadow: The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and International Human Rights Law)

Book Review, 28 Yale Journal of International Law 275 (2003) (reviewing Karen Knop, Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law)

Newspaper Articles

"Jim Yong Kim Will Face the World Bank's Culture of Economists. Let's Hope it Won't Be Pretty," The Washington Post Online, June 29, 2012

Research areas
International Law

Law Courses

Public International Law
Transnational Business and Human Rights

Publications

Galit Sarfaty SSRN