Fabio de Sá e Silva

Fabio de Sá e Silva is Associate Professor of International Studies and Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Oklahoma, as well as an affiliated fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession. Trained in law, social sciences, and public policy, he brings over 15 years of experience in legal policy and analysis in Brazil, where he served in the Ministry of Justice and the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea), and consulted for organizations such as the UNDP, UNESCO, and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.

A leading scholar on law, democracy, and the legal profession in Brazil, Professor de Sá e Silva’s research has received widespread recognition. His article From Carwash to Bolsonaro became the most-cited and most-downloaded article in the Journal of Law and Society in 2020, while his award-winning piece Relational Legal Consciousness and Anticorruption received the Law & Society Association’s best article award in 2022. His work maps how legal actors shape democratic and anti-democratic discourse, particularly through Brazil’s lava jato anti-corruption operation.