Cristina M. Rodríguez is the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her fields of research and teaching include constitutional law and theory, immigration law and policy, administrative law and process, and citizenship theory. In 2021, she was appointed by President Biden to co-chair the Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. Her recent writings include the 2020 Foreword to the Harvard Law Review, “Regime Change1,” and the book, The President and Immigration Law2, co-authored with Adam Cox and published by Oxford University Press in September 2020. In recent years, her work has focused on the relationships between administrative and executive governance and democratic politics and decisionmaking. She has turned to immigration law and related areas as vehicles through which to explore how the allocation and exercise of power (through federalism, the separation of powers, and the structure of the bureaucracy) shapes the management and resolution of legal and political conflict. Her work also has examined the effects of immigration on society and culture, as well as the legal and political strategies societies adopt to absorb immigrant populations. Rodríguez joined Yale Law School in 2013 after serving for two years as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. She was on the faculty at the New York University School of Law from 2004–2012 and has been Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia Law Schools. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Law Institute, a trustee and non-resident fellow of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., and a past member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She earned her B.A. and J.D. degrees from Yale and attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where she received a Master of Letters in Modern History. Following law school, Rodríguez clerked for Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science Akhil Reed Amar ’84 and Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law Cristina Rodríguez ’00 discussed recent Supreme Court decisions on this podcast episode.
This fall, the Ludwig Program in Public Sector Leadership held events focused on speakers who have established careers that serve the public interest in New Haven.
Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law Cristina Rodríguez ’00 and Melissa Murray ’02 discussed the legacy of Sandra Day O’Connor. Rodriguez is a former clerk for Justice O'Connor.
In recent pieces, Professors Abbe R. Gluck and Cristina Rodríguez have discussed what comes next for health law and immigration policies as official pandemic-era emergency declarations have come to an end.
RACIAL JUSTICE AND LAW11 (Foundation Press) (1st ed. 2016) (with R. Richard Banks, Guy-Uriel Charles, and Kim Forde-Mazrui),
IMMIGRATION AND REFUGEE LAW & POLICY (with Stephen H. Legomsky) (Foundation Press 6th ed. 2015) (5th ed. 2009) (Supplements 2011 & 2013).
Language Rights and Migration, in THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GLOBAL HUMAN MIGRATION (Oxford University Press 2013)
Immigration and the Civil Rights Paradigm, in THE NEW BLACK: WHAT HAS CHANGED, AND WHAT HAS NOT, WITH RACE IN AMERICA (Guy-Uriel Charles & Ken Mack, eds., New Press 2013)
The Integrated Regime of Immigration Regulation, in WRITING IMMIGRATION: SCHOLARS AND JOURNALISTS IN DIALOGUE (Roberto Suro & Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, eds., University of California Press 2011)
The Constitutional Status of Irregular Migrants: Testing the Boundaries of Human Rights Protection in Spain and the United States, in ARE HUMAN RIGHTS FOR MIGRANTS? (Marie Dembour & Tobias Kelley, eds., Routledge 2011) (with Ruth Rubio-Marín)
Legal Limits on Immigration Federalism, in TAKING LOCAL CONTROL: IMMIGRATION POLICY ACTIVISM IN U.S. CITIES AND STATES (Monica Varsanyi, ed., Stanford University Press 2010) (with Muzaffar Chishti & Kimberly Nortman)
The Law of Language in the Classroom, in AFFIRMING STUDENTS’ RIGHT TO THEIR OWN LANGUAGE: BRIDGING EDUCATIONAL POLICIES TO LANGUAGE/LANGUAGE ARTS TEACHING PRACTICES (Dolores Straker, et al. eds., Routledge 2008)
Articles & Essays
The Supreme Court, 2020 Term—Foreword12: Regime Change, 135 HARV. L. REV. 1 (2021)
Reading Regents and the Political Significance of Law, 2019 SUP. CT. REV.13 (2021)
Closing the Nation’s Doors14, 60 Democracy: A Journal of Ideas (October 2020) (Symposium issue: Trump v. Democracy)
Complexity As Constraint, 115 Colum. L Rev. Sidebar 179 (2015) (a review of Jon Michaels, An Enduring, Evolving Separation of Powers, 115 COLUM. L. REV. 515 (2015))
Toward Detente in Immigration Federalism18, 30 Virginia J. of Law & Politics 505 (2015) (symposium issue: The Future of Immigration Enforcement (in honor of retirement of David Martin))
Immigration and the Civil Rights Agenda25, 6 STAN. J. C.R.-C.L. 123 (2010) (symposium issue: civil rights and the Obama administration) (reprinted in THE NEW BLACK: WHAT HAS CHANGED, AND WHAT HAS NOT, WITH RACE IN AMERICA (Guy-Uriel Charles & Ken Mack, eds., New Press 2013))
Transnational Regulation of Migration26, 110 COLUM. L. REV. SIDEBAR 1 (2010) (reprinted in Migration, Human Rights and Development: A Global Anthology, Anne T. Gallagher, ed. (2013))
Discrete and Insular No More30, 12 HARV. LAT. LATINO REV. 41 (2009) (symposium issue in honor of the publication of Latinos and the Law (Delgado, Perea, Stefancic, eds.))
The Citizenship Paradox in a Transnational Age32, 106 MICH. L. REV. 1111 (2008) (a review of Hiroshi Motomura, AMERICANS IN WAITING: THE LOST STORY OF IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES, Oxford University Press (2006))
From Litigation, Legislation33, 117 YALE L.J. 1132 (2008) (a review of Brian Landsberg, FREE AT LAST TO VOTE: THE ALABAMA ORIGINS OF THE 1965 VOTING RIGHTS ACT, University Press of Kansas (2007))
Frameworks for Immigration Reform47, in What’s the Big Idea? Recommendations for Improving Law & Society in the Next Administration (American Constitution Society, October 2016)