Professor Sunder is a 2006 Carnegie Scholar and a leading scholar in the legal regulation of culture. Her work traverses numerous legal fields, from intellectual property and cultural property to human rights law and the First Amendment. She asks how age-old legal doctrines impede, rather than facilitate, change and modernity within traditional cultures. Adopting an interdisciplinary method, she argues that cultural studies and globalization studies can help us to modernize antiquated laws for the 21st century. Her recent publications include: "IP3," Stanford Law Review (2006), "The Invention of Traditional Knowledge," Law & Contemporary Problems (2007); "The Romance of the Public Domain," California Law Review (2004); "Piercing the Veil," Yale Law Journal (2003); and "Cultural Dissent," Stanford Law Review (2001). She has authored numerous comments and chapters in books and is the editor of Gender and Feminist Theory in Law and Society (2006). She is a contributor to Findlaw.com.

Professor Sunder was awarded a prestigious Carnegie Corporation Scholarship in 2006 to support her writing of a book on women reformers in the Muslim world. The book is titled "The New Enlightenment: How Muslim Women are Bringing Religion Out of the Dark Ages:"

Professor Sunder's articles have been awarded the Honorable Mention in the Association of American Law Schools Scholarly Paper competition and selected for presentation at the Stanford/Yale Jr. Faculty Forum. Professor Sunder has been invited to give the Yale Legal Theory Workshop (October 2003), the Williams Project Lecture at the UCLA School of Law (October 2003), the Endries Lecture at the Syracuse University College of Law (September 2002), and the Keynote address at the Malthus, Mendel and Monsanto conference at the University of Oregon School of Law (April 2004). She has presented her work at numerous law schools and universities in the U.S. and around the world, including in Brazil and India. In Fall 2003 Professor Sunder was a visiting professor of law at Cornell Law School. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the open-access, peer-reviewed online journal, /Copyright/, and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Cultural Property and the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights. She is the chair of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) section on Anthropology. From 2002 to 2005 she served on the Organizing Committee of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture & the Humanities. Sunder received her bachelor's degree in social studies, magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1992 and her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1997. While at Stanford, she was an articles editor for the Stanford Law Review. At Stanford, she won the Irving H. Hellman, Jr. Award for Outstanding Law Review Note and the Steven M. Block Civil Liberties Award for Exceptional Scholarship in Furtherance of Personal Freedom. Sunder clerked for Judge Harry Pregerson of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced law in New York City with the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton. In 1999 she joined the faculty of the UC Davis School of Law, where she is currently a tenured professor and teaches intellectual property, international intellectual property, property, and women's human rights. At UC Davis, Sunder was nominated for the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2001, 2002, and 2003.

Carnegie Corporation Scholar 2006-200

"IP3" paper selected for Stanford/Yale Jr. Faculty Forum (2006)

Honored as one of four "top young IP scholars" (by Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law, Stanford Law School, 2006)

Honorable Mention, Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Scholarly Paper Prize (2002)

Distinguished Teaching Award Nominee (2001, 2002, and 2003)

Law Clerk to the Honorable Harry Pregerson, U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit (1998-99)

Associate, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, New York City (1997-98)

B.A., Social Studies, Harvard College, 1992

J.D., Stanford University, 1997


Special Interests:Intellectual Property Theory, International Intellectual Property, Cultural Property, Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights, Intellectual Property in Cyberspace, Legal Regulation of Culture Flows, Law and Culture Studies, Law and Modernity Studies, Globalization & Postcolonial Studies, Women’s International Human Rights, Women’s Rights and Islam
59 Stan. L. Rev. 257 (2006). (Click here to read)

Piercing the Veil, 112 YALE L. J. 1399 (2003).
Excerpted in JUST ADVOCACY: WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS, TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISM, AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION (Wendy Hesford & Wendy Kozol, eds.) (2004). (Click here to read)

Cultural Dissent, 54 STAN. L. REV. 495 (2001).

Everyone's a Superhero: A Cultural Theory of Mary Sue Fan Fiction as Fair Use, 95 Cal. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2007) (with Anupam Chander)

The Invention of Traditional Knowledge, Duke J. L. & Contemp. Prob. (forthcoming 2006).
(Click here to read)

Enlightened Constitutionalism, 37 CONN. L. REV. (2005).
(Click here to read)

The Romance of the Public Domain, 92 CAL. L. REV. 1331 (2004) (coauthored with Anupam Chander). (Click here to read)

Intellectual Property and Identity Politics: Playing With Fire, 4 J. GENDER RACE & JUST. 69 (2000). (Click here to read)

In a Fragile Space: Sexual Harassment and the Construction of Indian Feminism, 18 Law & Policy 419 (1996) (published in Symposium on “The Right to Development”).

Note, Authorship and Autonomy as Rites of Exclusion: The Intellectual Propertization of Free Speech in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, 49 STAN. L. REV. 143 (1996).

Gender and Feminist Theory in Law & Society (editor) (Dartmouth/Ashgate 2006).
Introduction, in Gender and Feminist Theory in Law & Society (Madhavi Sunder, ed.) (2005).
(Click here to read)

Foreword: The Subject and Object of Commodification, (coauthored with Margaret Jane Radin), in Rethinking Commodification (Martha M. Ertman & Joan C. Williams, eds.) (2005).
(Click here to read)

Property in Personhood, in Rethinking Commodification (Martha M. Ertman & Joan C. Williams eds.) (2005). (Click here to read)

Piercing the Veil, in Just Advocacy: Women's Human Rights, Transnational Feminism, and the Politics of Representation (Wendy Hesford & Wendy Kozol, eds. 2004).

(Un)Disciplined, 26 Political and Legal Anthropology Review 77 (2003).

A Culture of One's Own: Learning From Women Living Under Muslim Laws, in Nothing Sacred: Women Respond to Religious Fundamentalism and Terror (Nation Books 2002).

Comment on Stuart Kirsch, Lost Worlds: Environmental Disaster, ?Culture Loss,' and the Law, in 42 Current Anthropology 189 (April 2001). Apple Rips While Grokster Burns: How MGM v. Grokster Benefits Information Technology Companies, Findlaw.com (June 29, 2005) (coauthored with Anupam Chander).

The New Afghan Constitution: Will It Respect Women’s Rights? Will Its Mixture of Religion and Democracy Work?, Findlaw.com (Jan. 15, 2004). (Republished on CNN.com, Jan. 20, 2004).

In a Trademark Case, The Supreme Court Recognizes That Art Flows From Multiple Sources, Findlaw.com (June 12, 2003).

Beauty Marred: The “Miss World” Riots, A Stoning Sentence, and the Conflict Between Religious and Secular Law in Nigeria, Findlaw.com (Dec. 5, 2002).

Why We Don’t Lead the World on Women’s Rights Issues: As Shown by An Unsigned Treaty, Not Cultural Imperialism, Findlaw.com (Oct. 10, 2002).

Book Review, The Pig Farmer's Daughter and Other Tales of American Justice, by Mary Frances Berry, Ms., May/June 1999.

Book Review, Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice, by Lani Guinier, Ms., May/June 1998.

Book Review, Where Is Your Body? Essays on Race, Gender and Law, by Mari J. Matsuda, Ms., January/February 1997. India: Rethinking Sex Crimes, Ms., March/April 1994.