Peter A Allard School of Law

Carol Liao

Associate Professor & UBC Sauder Distinguished Fellow
Co-Director, UBC Centre for Climate Justice & Chair, Canada Climate Law Initiative
B.A.H (Queen’s); LL.B. LL.M. (UBC); Ph.D./S.J.D. (UBC/University of Toronto)

Profile

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 of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice and the Chair and Principal Co-Investigator of the Canada Climate Law Initiative 

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 175 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. 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 also serves as a director on several corporate and non-profit boards. She is the recipient of the Influential Women in Business Award, BCBusiness Women of the Year Award (Equity and Inclusion Champion), 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 my research, please visit my PURE Research profile. You can also access my publications on the following sites: 

Courses

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

Publications

Books

Selected Articles and Chapters

Opinion Editorials

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

Selected publications are also listed on the Law Library Faculty Research Publications Database

Photo

Research Interests

  • Business, corporate and commercial law
  • Environmental law, natural resources, and climate change
  • Feminist legal studies
  • Law and social justice
  • Legal ethics and the legal profession

What are – and what should be – the fundamental principles driving the development of corporate law and governance in light of climate change and other environmental, social, and economic sustainability risks?


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