K. Sabeel Rahman

K. Sabeel Rahman is a Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. His academic research focuses on issues of democracy, governance, economic power, and racial justice. He works extensively with a range of think tanks, advocacy organizations, and foundations to develop novel approaches to addressing these issues in practice.

From 2021-2023, he served in the Biden-Harris Administration, including as the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). At OIRA, he oversaw the policy review and approval of all significant federal regulations and played a lead role in the Administration’s efforts on equity, data and information policy, and reforming regulatory analysis. From 2018-2021, he served as President of Demos, a national racial justice think tank and advocacy organization that played a key role in combatting voter suppression and developing and mainstreaming major policy ideas from climate justice to student debt relief to energy democracy. He also co-founded the Law and Political Economy Project, and currently serves as a Board Member for the Association for Law and Political Economy.

He is the author of several books including Remaking the State: A New Blueprint for American Democracy (Columbia Global Reports); Democracy Against Domination (Oxford University Press), Civic Power (with Hollie Russon Gillman, Cambridge University Press); and The Next Reconstruction (The New Press, forthcoming). His popular writings have appeared in venues like The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Boston Review, Dissent, and The Washington Post.