K. Sabeel Rahman

Board Member

K. Sabeel Rahman is a professor of law at Cornell Law School, where his research focuses on the themes of democracy, economic inequality, exclusion, and power. From 2021 to 2023, he served as senior counselor and associate administrator (delegated the duties of the administrator) in the Biden administration's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).


K. Sabeel Rahman is a professor of law at Cornell Law School. He is also a co-founder and faculty co-chair of the Law and Political Economy Project. His academic research focuses on issues of democracy, governance, economic power, political economy paradigms, racial equity, and inequality. 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 to 2023, he served in the Biden-Harris Administration, where he led 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 such as climate justice, student debt relief, and energy democracy.

He is the author Democracy Against Domination (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Civic Power (with Hollie Russon Gillman, Cambridge University Press, 2019). His popular writings have appeared in venues like The Atlantic, The New Republic, the Boston Review, Dissent, and the Washington Post.