Professor Backer researches on issues of globalization, especially as it relates to the emergence of ways of understanding constitutional and enterprise law and policy. His most recent work touches on the regulation of multinational corporations, sovereign wealth funds, transnational constitutionalism, and the convergence of public and private law. He is well known for his work on Chinese constitutional theory and has provided comments to changes in the Chinese NGO Management Law, the Charity Law and the Judicial Interpretation of the Chinese Company Law. He is currently researching issues of governments as private actors in global markets, the development of law and social norm systems to regulate business and human rights. In 2014 he published, with Jan Broekman, Signs In Law, A Source Book – The Semiotics of Law in Legal Education III (Springer) and in 2015 he published, with Frank Ravitch, Law and Religion: Cases, Materials, and Readings (3d ed. West Academic).

Professor Backer teaches classes in constitutional, corporate, and transnational law and policy. In SIA he has taught INTAF 801 and an introduction to US Law and Legal Systems. Professor Backer is a member of the American Law Institute, the European China Law Studies Association and the European Corporate Governance Institute. He served as chair of the Penn State University Faculty Senate for 2012-2013 and as Chair of the Universty’s Joint Diversity Awareness Task Force for 2015-2016.