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’s research lies at two types of intersections: the first is between Anglo-American common law and Asian law and the second is between law and the social sciences. Trained as a lawyer and anthropologist, his work addresses such issues as law and capitalism, alternative global orders, comparative international law, socio-legal methods and theories, and China. 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., arbitration, international litigation, investment law, conflict of laws, and non-intervention). 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.