Matthew Erie

Matthew S. Erie (J.D., Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor, Member of the Law Faculty, and Associate Research Fellow of the Socio-Legal Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. Professor Erie is trained in both law and anthropology and studies comparative Asian law, including the relationship between Anglo-American law and Asian law. Specifically, he has written on Chinese domestic law (e.g., property law, constitutional law, dispute resolution, and anti-corruption law), Islamic law (property, financial, personal status, and family law), and international law (e.g., dispute resolution, conflict of laws, and investment law). His work has either appeared in or is forthcoming in such journals as the Alabama Law Review, American Journal of Comparative Law, Harvard International Law Journal, American Journal of International Law Unbound, Yale International Law Journal, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, Virginia Journal of International Law, Law and Social Inquiry, and American Ethnologist. His first book, China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law (Cambridge University Press, 2016), is the first ethnographic study of the relationship between sharia and state law in China. His current research project “China, Law and Development,” funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant (€1.5 million), examines China’s approach to international law and the legal and regulatory systems of host states receiving Chinese capital. He is currently working on a number of book projects which grow out of this project.



He has taught law in the U.S., U.K., China, and Pakistan. At Oxford, he teaches Chinese law, international commercial arbitration in Asia, and empirical approaches to law. Professor Erie previously held academic positions at Princeton University and NYU Law School, and he was a visiting scholar at the National University Singapore Law Faculty. In the fall 2018, he was a Global Research Fellow in the Hauser Global Program of NYU Law School. He practiced law in the New York and Beijing offices of Paul Hastings LLP where he focused on corporate real estate transactions and white-collar investigations (e.g., FCPA). He holds degrees from Cornell University (Ph.D., Anthropology), University of Pennsylvania (J.D.), Tsinghua University Law School (LL.M.), and Dartmouth College (B.A). Professor Erie is a member of the New York Bar, a Fulbright Specialist, Co-Chair of the Asia-Pacific Interest Group of the American Society of International Law, and a Fellow of the Public Intellectual Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.