Anita Cava, JD

Director, Business Ethics Program; Co-Director, UM Ethics Programs (Retired)

Cava.jpgAnita Cava is Professor of Business Law in the UM School of Business.  Professor Cava’s research interests are the legal and ethical aspects of health administration as well as corporate/community engagement and business ethics.  As part of the Legal, Ethical and Social Implications (ELSI) Workgroup at UM, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Project Health Design, she addressed conundrums being generated by electronic health information.  Her article, Health Privacy in a Networked World: A Cyber-Patient’s Bill of Rights (with Patricia Abril), appears in the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property (2008).  Publications resulting from research with colleagues in the medical school include Bioethics, Business Ethics and the Future of Healthcare (with K.W. Goodman), Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2008), and Disclosure of HIV Status to an Infected Child:  Medical, psychological, ethical and legal perspectives on “super-vertical” transmission (with C.D. Mitchell, F.D. Armstrong, & K.W. Goodman),  The Journal of Clinical Ethics (2008).

Scholarly work examining legal and ethical obligations of corporations includes Are Anti-Corruption Efforts Paying Off? International and National Measures In the Asia-Pacific Region and their Impact on India and Multinational Corporations (with B. Earle) , University of Hawaii Law Review (2009) and Integrative Social Contract Theory and Urban Prosperity Initiatives (with D. Mayer), Journal of Business Ethics (2007).  Previous publications appear in the Berkeley Journal of Employment Law, the University of Maryland Law Review, the Santa Clara Law Review, the Arkansas Law Review, and the Business Ethis Quarterly in addition to many other legal and business journals.

Over the past five years, Professor Cava has helped to launch the undergraduate UM Ethics Bowl, the MBA Consultants to Non-Profits Project, and a campus-wide Ethics in Film series, which is free and open to the public.  She co-directs the Arsht Initiatives of UM Ethics Programs, which include a speaker series, funding for faculty/student research in “Ethics and Community” and a student Ethics Debate series on issues in sport and bioethics. In 2006, she taught a module on Corporate Social Responsibility at the American University in Paris.

Recently, the University of Miami Faculty Senate voted to give Cava the 2009 Outstanding Teaching Award, established in 2002 to recognize one faculty member’s “distinguished record in teaching” each year.  She is the first person from the School of Business to be given this honor.  In the spring of 2009, the UM Alumni Association presented Cava with the “Inside Out” Award, recognizing her efforts to bring alumni back to campus to engage in discussion about ethics.  Professor Cava is also the recipient of several School of Business Administration Excellence in Teaching Awards and, in 1996, a University-wide Provost’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

A frequent speaker on the topics of business ethics, corporate compliance and, more recently, the legal and ethical environment of electronic medical information, Professor Cava’s audiences have included Baptist Health System, Cordis Corporation, the American Council of Life Insurers, the Settlement Life Insurance Association, Palm Beach County Principals and the Institute for Non-Profit Management, as well as community groups, management trainees, and staff at several corporations and non-profit organizations.

Anita Cava received her B.A. with Distinction from Swarthmore College and her J.D. from New York University, where she was a Hays Fellow.  Before joining the faculty, she practiced law in Washington, D.C. and Miami, primarily in the areas of employment, consumer and commercial litigation.

Selected Publications


Contact Information 

Email: acava@miami.edu
Tel: 305-284-5084
Fax: 305-284-3762

School of Business Administration
University of Miami
Jenkins Building, 323F
PO Box 248022
Coral Gables, FL 33124