About Cristina M.
Cristina M. Rodríguez is a law professor and scholar whose career has moved between teaching and public service. She completed undergraduate and law degrees at Yale, earning a B.A. in 1995 and a J.D. in 2000. Her academic record at Yale preceded a career that blends classroom work, scholarship and a period in government.
After law school she entered legal practice and academia. By 2004 she had joined the faculty at New York University School of Law, where she taught courses and produced scholarship that engaged constitutional questions and issues surrounding immigration and citizenship. Her time at NYU established her as a frequent voice in legal debates about how federal power and individual rights intersect.
In 2011 she took a post in Washington, serving in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General. That role placed her at the center of legal advice to the executive branch and involved work on high-level legal opinions. She returned to full-time teaching after that period in government.
In 2013 she joined the faculty at Yale Law School as a professor of law. At Yale she teaches and writes on constitutional law, immigration and related fields. Her work probes how institutions allocate authority and how statutory and constitutional rules affect people’s lives. She has maintained an active profile in scholarly conversations and classroom instruction since moving to New Haven.
Her professional memberships reflect both academic and public-law engagement. She has been a member of the American Law Institute since 2016 and serves on the American Law Institute Early Career Scholars Medal Committee beginning in 2020. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020. She is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and serves as a trustee of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., a position she took on in 2020.
Rodríguez is admitted to practice in New York and is also admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court. Her career mixes teaching, research and periodic public service. She currently teaches at Yale Law School and continues a scholarly and teaching agenda centered on immigration and constitutional law.
