Biography

Sital Kalantry is a tenured professor of law and associate dean at Seattle University School of Law where she founded the RoundGlass India Center, with a $2.2 million dollar grant. She is an expert in comparative law, business and human rights, feminist legal theory, and contract law. Her latest book, Court on Trial, published by Penguin Press, examines the Indian Supreme Court using originally developed data to propose reforms to improve transparency and the functioning of the Court.

Her prior book, Women’s Rights and Migration, explores the consequences of the use of acontextual information to develop laws relating to reproduction in the United States. She has written over a dozen articles and book chapters that have been published in major legal journals such as the Cornell Law Review and the Stanford International Law Journal as well as peer-reviewed social sciences journals including the Forum for Health Economics and Policy. Her work has also appeared in the New York TimesSlate, and the Hill (among others). She is a regular media commentator on reproductive rights, law in India, and human rights issues. Her writing has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and Indian Supreme Court.

Professor Kalantry teaches business and human rights, comparative constitutional law, and contract law. Her teaching is informed by her scholarship as well as her seven years of experience as a corporate lawyer at two major U.S. law firms, Milbank and O’Melveny & Myers, and by her litigation experience in international and foreign courts, including the Indian Supreme Court, Inter-American Court of Human Rights and Constitutional Court of Colombia.

She founded the Cornell International Human Rights Clinic, the University of Chicago International Human Rights Clinic, the Avon Global Center for Women & Justice at Cornell Law School, the Cornell India Law Center, and the India Center for Law and Justice at Seattle University School of Law. She is the founding faculty director of an online Master’s in Legal Studies Program at Cornell Law School. In that role, she designed the curriculum, recruited tenured and adjunct professors to teach courses, created admissions criteria, and coordinated with instructional designers and other administrators for this new master’s program at Cornell Law School.

She has won awards for her book, for her public interest work (from the South Asian Bar Association), and for her mentorship and support to women students at Cornell University. She has received several grants, including a $1.5 million grant to start the Avon Center for Women and Justice, a grant from NYC Visioning Committee, and teaching innovation grant. She received the Fulbright Scholarship to teach at Jindal Global Law School in India and to conduct empirical research on the Indian Supreme Court.

Professor Kalantry has degrees from Cornell University (A.B.), the London School of Economics (MsC), and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (J.D).

Articles, Publications, and Appearances

My opinions have been sought after by reporters on numerous media stories, including those relating to violence against women, the Indian Supreme Court, sex-selective abortion laws.   

  • Listen to my interview with NPR on an Alabama Court decision (February 28, 2024). 
  • Interviewed by KUOW Radio in Seattle on a Podcast about caste discrimination in the United States (February 28, 2023)
  • Interviewed by Quint on my work on comparative abortion laws in India and the United States (May 22, 2022)
  • Interviewed by Bloomberg on the inter-state abortion battles that might arise post-Roe (May 16, 2022)
  • Watch my interview on King5 news about the future of same-sex rights (May 4, 2022)
  • Listen to a podcast aired on NPR about the future of abortion access in Washington state (May 4, 2022)
  • Quoted in article by Courthouse Newservice discussing a new abortion law passed in Washington State (March 17, 2022)
  • Read this profile published about me in the Northwest Asian Weekly (January 20, 2022)
  • Listen to my interview with Gee and Ursula on KIRO Radio (December 2, 2021)
  • Watch my interview with with KING TV in Seattle about the potential consequences in WA state if Roe v. Wade were overturned (December 1, 2021).
  • Discussing the challenges faced by surrogates in India because of the lack of protections in India in A Ban on Commercial Surrogacy Could Leave Women in India with Fewer Options, Time (June 30, 2021).
  • Addressing how U.S. Sex-selective abortion bans rely on inaccurate assumptions about abortion motivations in Asian communities within the United States in Sex-Selective Abortions: Reproductive Rights Are Being Pitted Against Gender Equality, NBC News (Oct. 27, 2019)
  • Discussing obstacles to legalizing gestational surrogacy in The Story of Surrogacy, India Abroad (Sep. 11, 2019)

And many more examples can be found here: Media | Sital Kalantry (skalantry.com)