Faculty

Professor Ramasastry joined the University of Washington School of Law faculty in 1996. She has been recognized by the students as the Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year in 1997, 2003, and 2006. In 1998, she received the UW Distinguished Teaching Award and in 2002, she received the UW Outstanding Public Service Award for her work with battered immigrant women and children. Her research interests include commercial law, banking and payments systems, law and development and comparative law. Her current research focuses on the accountability of economic actors in conflict and weak governance zones. During 2008, she was a Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at the Irish Center for Human Rights – NUI Galway.

She has served as a staff attorney at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an associate attorney at the international law firm of White & Case in Budapest, Hungary, and assistant professor of law at the Central European University in Budapest, founded by financier George Soros. She was the symposium editor for the Harvard International Law Journal and has clerked for Justice Alan B. Handler of the New Jersey Supreme Court. In 1998-99, she served as a special attorney and advisor to a special claims resolution tribunal in Zurich, Switzerland, established to resolve claims to World War II-era bank accounts. She has been a visiting professor and Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary Westfield College, and University of London. Professor Ramasastry served as a visiting scholar at the British Financial Services Authority.

During the fall of 2001, she was a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Professor Ramasastry is a commissioner and chair of the Washington state delegation to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. She has been a consultant and advisor to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the U.S. Department of Commerce Commercial Law Development Program, the European Commission, Global Witness and the Open Society Institute. She has been an advisor to the International Commission of Jurists Expert Panel on Corporate Complicity and has participated in several expert consultations convened by the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative on Business and Human Rights. She is also the project leader for the Commerce, Crime and Conflict project coordinated by the Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies in Norway.