Biography
Jeffrey Omari is an Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law. His research—which merges ethnographic fieldwork and anthropological theory with doctrinal analysis—sits at the intersection of law, technology, and social science. In addition to his work on internet governance in Brazil, Omari’s research also explores digital rights and governance in our current age of misinformation.
As a legal anthropologist, Omari has conducted over 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo where he studied the Brazilian government's implementation of an "internet bill of rights." He is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association (Class of 2023) and currently sits on the Editorial Advisory Board of Law & Society Review. Additionally, he sits on the Editorial Board and is the Book Reviews Co-Editor of Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR). Among other outlets, his writing has appeared in Law and Social Inquiry, Law & Society Review, PoLAR, Washington & Lee Law Review, Connecticut Law Review, and the Michigan Law Review.
Omari was the inaugural Visiting Assistant Professor in the Center for Civil and Human Rights at Gonzaga University School of Law. He was also a Law and Social Science Doctoral Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, a Juris Doctor from the University of Illinois College of Law, and a Bachelor of Arts from Morehouse College. Before pursuing his Ph.D., he worked as a music licensing consultant in the music legal affairs department of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc.
Publications
- Political Disinformation in the Anthropocene, 81 Wash & Lee Law Review 5 (2025)
- New Legal Realism at 20: Rethinking Law in an Era of Populism and Social Movements (with Pablo Rueda Saiz and Richard Ashby Wilson), 57 Connecticut Law Review 1 (2024)
- Informality and the Internet: A Study of Technological Governance in Brazil (with Jason Scott) in Technology and Governance Beyond the State: The Rule of Non-Law (Eds. Clara Voyvodic and Nicole Stremlau, Routledge Press, 2024).
- Civil Rights in Times of Uncertainty (The Anthropocene), 120 Michigan Law Review 1571 (2022)
- Is Facebook the Internet? Ethnographic Perspectives on Open Internet Governance in Brazil, Law & Social Inquiry, 45(4): 1093-1112 (2020)