Rama Hyeweon Kim

Professor Kim writes and teaches in the areas of family law, comparative private law, and feminist legal theory.

Her work is organized around two primary lines of inquiry. The first explores the relationship between economic inequality and family law in the U.S. In a recent article, she argues that the legal recognition of “functional parents”—an approach often lauded for promoting inclusivity—has unintended costs for poor and racialized families.

Her second line of research examines the history of legal thought in South Korea as part of the global genealogy of legal knowledge, with a specific focus on family, sex, and gender law. Her scholarship has traced competing ideas and legal developments in Korean private law, which evolved through legal transplants from Germany to Japan to Korea. She analyzes how these ideas continue to shape contemporary legal discourses in Korea, including the debate on same-sex marriage. Her current project investigates the history of Korean legal feminism since the mid-20th century. This project conceptualizes the rise and fall of three distinct legal feminisms, each shaped by globalizing legal and feminist ideas and the shifting Korean political economy.

Professor Kim holds an S.J.D. and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, where she was twice awarded the Yong K. Kim ’95 Memorial Writing Prize. Prior to her doctoral studies, she practiced at the Seoul-based law firm Lee & Ko after receiving her J.D. from Seoul National University School of Law.