Carol Liao

Dr. Carol Liao is an Associate Professor at Allard Law and the UBC Sauder Distinguished Fellow of the Peter P. Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at the UBC Sauder School of Business. Her research focuses on corporate law and sustainability, climate governance, and social justice. She is the Co-Director (Academic) of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice and the Chair and Principal Co-Investigator of the Canada Climate Law Initiative, dedicated to advancing director knowledge on the latest in climate risks and fiduciary obligations.

Dr. Liao is Principal Investigator of a SSHRC Insight Grant-funded empirical study on sustainable corporate governance and a UBC research excellence cluster member of the Future Minerals Initiative and Decision Insights for Business & Society. She has delivered over 200 invited talks around the world on sustainable business and has been featured over 100 times in TV, radio, and print news media on corporate governance, ESG, and equity issues. In 2024, she was recognized with the UBC Public Engagement Award. As Director of the Centre for Business Law from 2019-2023, she hosted over 125 professional and scholarly events on range of contemporary business topics and oversaw two experiential learning programs.  

Committed to community-engaged scholarship, Dr. Liao is featured in the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers (FACL) BC documentary But I Look Like a Lawyer, and sits on the FACL BC Advisory Committee. She delivered the closing keynote at the 43rd Annual Women in Law Dinner (transcript) and FACL BC 10th Anniversary Gala (transcript). Dr. Liao is a member of the Solicitors' Legal Opinions Committee of BC and serves on the Advisory Council for BCBusiness and Vancouver Magazine. She also sits on the boards of InBC Investment Corporation, YWCA Metro Vancouver, and the Canadian Foundation for Governance Research at the Institute of Corporate Directors. At UBC, Dr. Liao is a member of the Steering Committee of the Climate Solutions Research Collective and the Advisory Board of The Phil Lind Initiative. She is also a Research Associate at the UVic Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives. Dr. Liao is the recipient of the Influential Women in Business Award, BCBusiness Women of the Year Award, TELUS Community Service Award, Canada's Clean50 Award, and was named as one of Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women and Canada's Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers.

Before joining UBC, Dr. Liao was a faculty member at the University of Victoria where she received the UVic Law Students’ Society First Year Class Teaching Award. Prior to academia, she was a senior associate in the New York Mergers & Acquisitions Group of Shearman & Sterling LLP (now A&O Shearman), where she represented public and private multinational corporations in a variety of transactional and governance matters. She also served at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. She is a former judicial clerk of the BC Court of Appeal.

Research and Publications

To learn more about Dr. Liao's research, please visit her PURE Research profile. You can also access her works on the following sites: 

• Allard Research Commons / bepress Legal Repository Search
• SSRN (Social Science Research Network)
• HeinOnline

• Business Organizations (LAW 459 / 506D)
• Corporate Social Responsibility and the Law (LAW 306D)
• Contract Law (LAW 211)
• Topics in Corporate Law (LAW 467D)

Books

• Beate Sjåfjell and Carol Liao, eds., Research Handbook on Sustainability and Corporate Accountability (Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2025).
• Carol Liao, ed, Corporate Law and Sustainability from the Next Generation of Lawyers (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022). Foreword by Joel Bakan.
  • Photos of launch events held at Bennett Jones LLP and Allard Law.
• Beate Sjåfjell, Carol Liao and Aikaterini Argyrou, eds, Innovating Business for Sustainability: Regulatory Approaches in the Anthropocene (Edward Elgar, 2022).
  • See Frederick Dahlmann, Book Review of Innovating Business for Sustainability (2024) 19 Earth System Governance 100190.
  • See Christopher Bruner, Book Review of Innovating Business for Sustainability (2023) 12:2 Cambridge International Law Journal 337.
  • See David Kuhlmann, Book Review of Innovating Business for Sustainability (2023) 19(1) Law, Environment and Development (LEAD) Journal 901.
  • See Cecelia Bailliet, Book Review of Innovating Business for Sustainability (2023) 92 Nordic Journal of International Law 314.
• Robert Yalden, Janis Sarra, Paul D. Paton, Mark Gillen, Mary Condon, Carol Liao, Michael Deturbide, Mohamed Khimji, Bradley Bryan and Gary Campo, Business Organizations: Practice, Theory, and Emerging Challenges, 2^nd ed (Emond, 2018).

Selected Articles and Chapters 

• Carol Liao, "Corporate Corruption and Patriarchal Power: A Feminist Critique of Governance and Accountability" Australian Feminist Law Journal (forthcoming 2026).
• Carol Liao, "Legal Intersections of Climate Risks, Indigenous Rights, and Corporate Fiduciary Obligations" Business and Human Rights Journal Online (forthcoming).
• Carol Liao, "Early East and Southeast Asian Women in the Canadian Legal Academy" in Anna Lund and Virginia Torrie, eds., Early Women in the Canadian Legal Academy (UBC Press, forthcoming 2025).
• Carol Liao, "Reflections on Equity and Asian Canadians in the Legal Profession" (2025) Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers BC Journal 7.
• Carol Liao, "Climate Change and Stakeholder Enforcement of International Law Against Corporations" Harvard International Law Journal Online, 20 December 2024.
• Carol Liao, "Lawyers in a Warming World" (2024) 62:1 Alberta Law Review 1.
  • Reprinted in the McGill SGI Research Papers in Business, Finance, Law and Society eJournal (21 October 2024).
• Carol Liao, "The Face of Mining" in Philippe Tortell, ed., Heavy Metal: Earth's Minerals and the Future of Sustainable Societies (Open Book Publishers, 2024).
  • Book featured in Richard Littlemore, 'Clean Energy's Catch-22,' UBC Magazine, 19 November 2024.
• Carol Liao, "An Anti-Racist Feminist Agenda for Sustainable Corporate Law" in Christopher Bruner and Marc Moore, eds, A Research Agenda for Corporate Law (Edward Elgar, 2023).
• Carol Liao, "'The Next 10 Years': Keynote Address on the 10th Anniversary of the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers BC" (2023) 55:3 UBC Law Review 901.
• Carol Liao, "B Corporation, Benefit Corporation, and Neoliberal Greenwash: The Private American Branding Attempt to Globally Capture the Definition and Regulation of 'Good' Business" in Dana Brakman Reiser, Steven A. Dean, and Giedre Lideikyte-Huber, eds., Social Enterprise Law: A Multijurisdictional Comparative Review (Intersentia, 2023).
• Carol Liao, "The Questionable Rise of 'Good' Corporations and Hybrid Business Law: Theoretical Trappings, Methodological Challenges, and Transdisciplinary Futures" in Roseanne Russell, Beate Sjåfjell and Maja van der Velden, eds, Interdisciplinary Research for Sustainable Business (Springer Nature, 2023).
• Carol Liao, "The Millennial Generation and the Post-Pandemic Future of Corporate Law and Sustainability" in Liao, ed, Corporate Law and Sustainability from the Next Generation of Lawyers (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022).
• Carol Liao, Beate Sjåfjell and Aikaterini Argyrou, "Innovating Business for a Sustainable Post-Pandemic Future" in Sjåfjell, Liao and Argyrou, Innovating Business for Sustainability: Regulatory Approaches in the Anthropocene (Edward Elgar, 2022).
• Carol Liao, "Regulation by Litigation on the Path to Sustainable Corporations" in Sjåfjell, Liao and Argyrou, Innovating Business for Sustainability: Regulatory Approaches in the Anthropocene (Edward Elgar, 2022).
• Carol Liao, Beate Sjåfjell and Aikaterini Argyrou, "Corporate Law and Sustainability in a Reimagined Post-Pandemic World" in Sjåfjell, Liao and Argyrou, Innovating Business for Sustainability: Regulatory Approaches in the Anthropocene (Edward Elgar, 2022).
• Carol Liao, "Power, Gender, and Race in the Legal Profession" (2022) 34:1 Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 174.
• Carol Liao, “On Race and Academia in the Time of COVID-19” (2020) 25:4 Lex Electronica 120.
• Carol Liao, “Social Enterprise Law: Friend or Foe to Corporate Sustainability?” in Beate Sjåfjell and Christopher Bruner, eds, The Cambridge Handbook for Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
• Carol Liao, Elsir U. Tawfik and Pat Teichreb, “The Global Social Enterprise Lawmaking Phenomenon: State Initiatives on Purpose, Capital, and Taxation” (2019) 36 Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 86.
• Carol Liao, “Power and the Gender Imperative in Corporate Law” in Beate Sjåfjell and Irene Lynch Fannon, eds, Creating Corporate Sustainability: Gender as an Agent for Change (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
• Carol Liao, “Early Lessons in Social Enterprise Law” in Benjamin Means and Joseph W. Yockey, eds, The Cambridge Handbook for Social Enterprise Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
• Carol Liao, “A Critical Canadian Perspective on the Benefit Corporation” in the Special Symposium Edition “The Benefit Corporation and the Firm Commitment Universe” (2017) 40:2 Seattle University Law Review 683.
• Carol Liao, “The Changing Face of the Non-Profit Sector: Social Enterprise Legislation in British Columbia” in Nick Mulé and Gloria DeSantis, eds, The Shifting Terrain: Nonprofit Policy Advocacy in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017).
• Anna Lund, Gail Henderson, Clayton Bangsund, Freya Kodar, Carol Liao and Shanthi Senthe, “Reconciliation in the Corporate Commercial Classroom” (2016) 2:1 Lakehead Law Review 49.
• Carol Liao, “Limits to Corporate Reform and Alternative Legal Structures” in Beate Sjåfjell and Benjamin Richardson, eds, Company Law and Sustainability: Legal Barriers and Opportunities (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
  • See Ben Archer, Book Review of Company Law and Sustainability (2016) 36:2 Legal Studies 375, noting the book as "clearly one of the most comprehensive works on the topic to date" and Liao's chapter as "particularly excellent."
  • A Korean language edition of the book was published in 2018.
• Carol Liao, “A Canadian Model of Corporate Governance” (2014) 37:2 Dalhousie Law Journal 559.
  • Reprinted in Corporate and Financial Law: Interdisciplinary Approaches eJournal, James A. Fanto and Lawrence E. Mitchell, eds, Vol. 9, No. 60 (5 December 2013).
  • Originally the 2013 Robert Bertram Award Report, Canadian Foundation for Governance Research (November 2013).
  • Ranked first on the list of All Time Top Papers in the Corporate Governance Network's eLibrary on Canada by the Social Science Research Network.
• Carol Liao, “A Canadian Model of Corporate Governance: Where Do Shareholders Really Stand?” (Jan/Feb 2014) Director Journal of the Institute of Corporate Directors 36.
• Carol Liao, “Disruptive Innovation and the Global Emergence of Hybrid Legal Structures” (April 2014) 11:2 European Company Law 67.
• Carol Liao, “The Next Stage of CSR for Canada: Transformational Corporate Governance, Hybrid Legal Structures, and the Growth of Social Enterprise” (2013) 9 McGill Journal of Sustainable Development Law 53.
  • Reprinted in the Canadian Law eJournal, Anita Anand, ed, Vol. 9, No. 40 (13 June 2013).
• Carol Liao, “Corporate Governance Reform for the 21st Century: A Critical Reassessment of the Shareholder Primacy Model” (2012) 43(2) Ottawa Law Review 187.
• Carol Liao, “Designing Social Value Architecture for the For-Profit Company” (2012) 67 Canadian Review of Social Policy 85.
• Cristie Ford and Carol Liao, “Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, and the Derivatives Revolution” in the Special Symposium Edition “In Berle’s Footsteps” marking the launch of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society (2010) 33 Seattle University Law Review 889. 

Opinion Editorials

• Sara Ghebremusse, Allen Edzerza, Carol Liao and Philippe Tortell, "A New Future for BC Mineral Claims," Canada's National Observer, 12 October 2023.
• Sue Brown and Carol Liao, "Atira's Walls Come Tumbling Down," Business in Vancouver, 26 May 2023.
• Sara Ghebremusse, Allen Edzerza, Carol Liao, Nadja Kunz and Philippe Tortell, "Challenging Colonial Mining Laws: First Nations Fight for Indigenous Consent," Canada's National Observer, 15 May 2023.
• Werner Antweiler, Shaun Barker, Roger Beckie, Erik Eberhardt, Allen Edzerza, Ken Edzerza, Sara Ghebremusse, Lindsey Heagy, Maria Holuszko, Nadja Kunz, Carol Liao, Allison Macfarlane, Kirby Muldoe, Shandin Pete, Dave Porter and Philippe Tortell, "A Critical Look at Critical Minerals," Policy Options, 23 February 2023.
• Carol Liao, "Lawyers Can't Ignore Climate Change," The Tyee, 15 June 2022.
• Cary Wu, Abidin Kusno, Ann H. Kim, Carol Liao, Dennis Kao, Guida Man, Hae Yeon Choo, Jing Zhao, Min Zhou, Muyang Li, S. Harris Ali, Sibo Chen, Sida Liu, Weiguo Zhang, and Zhifan Luo, “As Asian Canadian Scholars, We Must #StopAsianHate by Fighting All Forms of Racism,” The Conversation, 15 April 2021.
  • Reprinted in National Post and University Affairs, 16 April 2021.
• Carol Liao, “COVID-19 Has Shined a Spotlight on the Anti-Asian Racism That Has Always Existed in Canada,” CBC News, 16 May 2020.
• Carol Liao, “BC MLAs Should Recognize ‘Benefit Corporation’ is an American Branding Exercise,” The Globe and Mail, 21 October 2018.
• Carol Liao, “Why We #PressforProgress in Corporate Boardrooms,” The Globe and Mail, 7 March 2018.

For Dr. Liao's publications available on SSRN, go here.

Selected publications are also listed on the Allard Research Portal.