Chika Okafor

Professor Chika O. Okafor is a law, economics, and inequality scholar who teaches about constitutional law and climate/energy law. His scholarship integrates economic theory with empirical methods to explore how legal institutions and social networks impact major economic and social problems facing contemporary American society—including economic inequality, historic levels of incarceration, and climate change. His scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Law and Economics, and his writing has appeared in the Boston Globe and Newsweek.

Professor Okafor joined the Northwestern Pritzker Law faculty in 2025. He also holds dual courtesy appointments in the Economics Department and the Kellogg School of Management, and is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. 

Before becoming a law professor, Professor Okafor held leadership roles spanning both the private and public sectors. Within the private sector, he worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and as a corporate attorney in the London Office of Skadden. Within public service and social impact, he founded Todaydream® (a social venture dedicated to supporting K-12 students), led elements of local gun violence prevention efforts with the Chicago Public Schools, supported national economic and environmental policy with the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), and promoted international human rights with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide.

Professor Okafor earned his PhD in economics from Harvard University, his JD from Yale Law School, and his BA from Stanford University.