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Biography

Dr. Victor V. Ramraj is Professor of Law, Chair in Asia-Pacific Legal Relations, and Director of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) at the Ó£»¨Ó°ÊÓ. He previously spent 16 years at the NUS Faculty of Law in Singapore and was twice seconded to the Center for Transnational Legal Studies in London, a consortium of leading global law schools. He is a regular visiting professor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. His 50+ journal articles and chapters have been published on five continents. He is also the (co)author or (co)editor of 8 books, textbooks, and edited collections, including Emergency Powers in Asia (co-edited, Cambridge, 2010) and Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts (Oxford, 2020). Dr. Ramraj enjoys supervising and mentoring LLM and PhD students and, in recent years, has taught courses on transnational law; law and society in Southeast Asia; and law, complexity, and crisis in Asia. In additional to his academic activities, he has served as an advisor to the Canadian government foreign policy issues, has co-organized and participated in Track 1.5 and Track 2 dialogues, and has testified as a expert witness on a Canadian commission of inquiry on the Emergencies Act.

Education

• BA Hons (Philosophy), McGill;
• MA (Philosophy), University of Toronto;
• LLB, University of Toronto;
• LLM Dist. (Queen's University Belfast);
• PhD (Philosophy), University of Toronto

Selected books

• Victor V. Ramraj, ed., Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020) (edited volume, 30 chapters).
• Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Victor V. Ramraj, Arun K. Thiruvengadam & Supriya Routh, eds., Amartya Sen and Law: Philosophers and Law (London: Ashgate Publishing, 2019).
• Victor V. Ramraj, Michael Hor, Kent Roach & George Williams Global Anti-Terrorism Law and Policy, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
• Victor V. Ramraj & Arun K. Thiruvengadam, eds., Emergency Powers in Asia: Exploring the Limits of Legality (Cambridge: CUP, 2010; first South Asia edition, Delhi: CUP, 2017).
• Victor V. Ramraj, ed., Emergencies and the Limits of Legality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008; paperback edition, 2012).

Selected Book Chapters

• Maartje De Visser, Victor V. Ramraj, and Arun K. Thiruvengadam “Constitutions and the Rule of Law in Asia” in Erik Kuhonta, ed., Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics [online] (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024)
• Victor V. Ramraj, “Transnational Regulation” in Mathias Siems and Po Jen Yap, eds., Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), 575-93. 
• “Emergency Powers and Military Rule” in Holning Lau, David S. Law & Alex Schwartz, eds., Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 October 2023).
• Victor V. Ramraj, “The Constitutional Politics of Emergency Powers” in Mark Tushnet and Dimitry Kochenov, eds., Research Handbook on the Politics of Constitutional Law (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2023), 163-175.
• Victor V. Ramraj, Nima Dorji, Pooja Parmar & Benjamin Schonthal, “Legal pluralism and globalization from the Himalayas to Southeast Asia” (2022) 54(1) Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis 7-12.
• Victor V. Ramraj, “Democracy and Authoritarianism” (Chapter 24) in Peter Cane et al., eds., Oxford Handbook of Comparative Administrative Law (Oxford: OUP, 2020), 481-499.
• “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.
• Victor V. Ramraj, “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.
• Victor V. Ramraj, “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.

Selected publications

• Maartje De Visser, Victor V. Ramraj, and Qian Liu, “Law, Politics, and the Academy in Asia: Navigating Constraints as Public Law Scholars” (2025) Asian Journal of Law and Society 1–23.
• Victor V. Ramraj, “Global Challenges and Plurilateral Engagement in the Indian Ocean World” (2023) 17(1) Canadian Political Science Review 10-24.
• Victor V. Ramraj, “Coordination Failure, Pandemic Prevention, and Political Polarization in Global Perspective” (2023) 46 Manitoba Law Journal 179-189.
• Victor V. Ramraj, “Gross National Happiness through a Global Lens” (2021) 1 Journal of Gross National Happiness and Law 351-367.
• Victor V. Ramraj & Neilesh Bose, “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 277-290.
• Victor V. Ramraj, “International Institutional Bypasses and Transnational Non-State Regulation” (2019) 10 Transnational Legal Theory 295-317.
• Victor V. Ramraj, “Prospects for Judicial Review of Transnational Private Regulation: Singapore and Canada” (2016) 21 Tilburg Law Review 230-54. 
• Victor V. Ramraj, “Emergency Powers and Constitutional Theory” (2011) 41(2) Hong Kong Law Journal 481-515
• Victor V. Ramraj, “Constitutional Tipping Points: Sustainable Constitutionalism in Theory and Practice” (2010) 1(2) Transnational Legal Theory 191-220.

Special projects

• Law, Complexity, and Crisis (ongoing book project);
• Roundtable on Southeast Asia in Global Context (CAPI roundtable series)

Grants

• Dr. Ramraj has received approximately $1 million in grant funding from funding agencies in Canada and Singapore.

Courses

• : Law, Complexity, and Crisis in Asia
• Law 370: Law and Society in Southeast Asia

Graduate supervision

Dr. Ramraj is interested in supervising students working on comparative constitutional and administrative law (especially with an Asia focus), transnational law and regulation, legal pluralism in Southeast Asia, law and complex global challenges, emergency powers and crisis governance. He is especially interested in students whose research aligns with the interdisciplinary, Asia-focused approach of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI).