Carlos Portugal Gouvêa

Carlos Portugal Gouvêa is an Associate Professor at the University of São Paulo Law School (USP) in Brazil. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the Global Law Institute (IDGlobal), a leading think tank on environmental and social justice in Brazil. The work of IDGlobal focuses on high impact research on indigenous communities and quilombos, in projects led by several senior researchers of indigenous descent. Under the coordination of Professor Portugal Gouvêa, IDGlobal has undertaken initiatives such as the translation of the Brazilian Constitution into indigenous languages, the monitoring of state-led programs aimed at universal energy access in indigenous communities, and the multidisciplinary analysis of carbon offset mechanisms in indigenous territories.

At the University of São Paulo Law School, he leads the Center for Corporate Governance (CGC-USP), the Asian Legal Studies Center (CELA-USP), the Law and Poverty Group (GDP-USP), the Law and Technology Group (TechLab-USP), the Law, Health and Social Inequality Group (DS²), and the Non-profit Law Center (G3S-USP). He coordinates the most prestigious business law review in Brazil, the Revista de Direito Mercantil Industrial, Econômico e Financeiro. He also coordinates the Center for Applied Regulatory Innovation at the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (CRIA-CVM), responsible for researching and proposing possible new regulations on topics such as tokenization and green finance. He is the President of the Diversity and Inclusion Commission at the University of São Paulo Law School.

He joined the faculty of USP in 2011 and holds an S.J.D.’08 from Harvard Law School and an LL.B.’01 and a Livre-Docência’22 from the University of São Paulo. His scholarship focuses on corporate governance, ESG, human rights, and distributive issues in private law.

As a practicing lawyer and consultant, he founded the first law firm in Brazil focused on corporate governance matters, PGLaw, leading the implementation of the first human rights and business programs in Brazilian public companies and other large-scale consumer, anticorruption and diversity compliance projects. He has served as a Counselor at the Brazilian Council of Appeals of the National Financial System (CRSFN) from 2015 to 2018, which is the appeals body of the Brazilian Securities Commission and Central Bank. In this capacity, he was the rapporteur of leading decisions regarding the use of statistical analysis as proof in insider trading cases and the fiduciary duties of controlling shareholders. He has also served many times as a consultant to the Brazilian Federal Government, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Bank on projects such as assisting the Brazilian Water Regulation Agency in drafting rules related to the Federal Sanitation Law of 2020 with the purpose of making water distribution universal in Brazil, and the Ministry of Agriculture in creating an agency to regulate agricultural data and intelligence. He was previously an associate at the corporate department of Debevoise & Plimpton, with a focus on corporate governance matters.

His scholarship is focused on research that can have a high and immediate impact on legislation and case law in developing countries. As a co-coordinator of the Law and Poverty Group (GDP), in 2021, he led the research project that grounded the most important ruling of the Brazilian Supreme Court on the relationship between intellectual property and health, which struck down as unconstitutional section of the Brazilian Intellectual Property Law that allowed for an automatic extension of patent protection. He also led a group of 52 researchers who documented violence against Indigenous communities in Brazil. Such study grounded the petition of the Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil denouncing the practice of genocide in Brazil before the International Criminal Court in 2021. Most recently, he led a team of 20 researchers on a project to map all litigation related to homelessness in the world, which was presented as an amicus curiae report in a leading case on the subject before the Brazilian Supreme Court.

As a human rights activist, he was a founding member of two of the most relevant human rights non-profits in Brazil: Instituto Sou da Paz, which led the largest anti-violence campaign in the country, resulting in the enactment of the federal Gun Control Act of 2003, and Conectas Human Rights, which was established based on a grant from the United Nations Foundation to create a leading human rights organization in the Global South.

He is currently a board member of several Brazilian companies, non-profit and governmental organizations, such as the Fulbright Commission in Brazil, which is the largest grantor of scholarships for foreign studies in Brazil, the Brazilian Students Organization (Brasa), the largest organization for Brazilian students abroad, Generation, an organization founded by McKinsey & Company to train underprivileged students on coding, and the endowment fund of the University of São Paulo Law School, Sempre SanFran.