Rodríguez — who is known as a leading scholar in immigration and constitutional law — earned praise from law professors for her scholarship and experience working in government.
On Sunday, Cristina Rodríguez ’95 LAW ’00 became the 18th dean of Yale Law School.
As Rodríguez assumes the deanship, members of the Law School faculty expressed confidence in her abilities and highlighted her background in immigration law and government service. Several professors told the News that Rodriguez — who co-chaired the Yale committee that recommended administrators stay quiet on current events — was the right choice for a moment when universities nationwide are facing intense scrutiny, including from the White House.
“She’s a leading scholar on immigration law, which, almost every year for the last 20 years, has become more and more important,” professor William Eskridge Jr. LAW ’78 said in a phone interview.
Rodríguez’s scholarship has focused extensively on administrative, immigration and constitutional law — especially immigration law as it relates to executive power. In 2020, Rodríguez co-wrote a book titled “The President and Immigration Law” with Adam Cox, which chronicles the two-century-long process by which the president, as opposed to Congress, became the primary shaper of American immigration policy.
In a Zoom interview with the News, Sterling professor and former Law School Dean Robert Post LAW ’77 praised Rodríguez for her scholarship, calling her a “terrific constitutional law scholar” and “one of the two or three preeminent scholars in the field of immigration law.”
Rodríguez co-chaired President Joe Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court in 2021, and previously served on Biden’s presidential transition team as part of the Department of Justice Agency Review Team. During the Obama administration, Rodríguez served as a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Post said that Rodríguez’s experience with government has helped make her a more informed and credible scholar.
“She has been in government, she knows what it means to function in the bureaucracy, and she knows, therefore, how law and the conception of administrative law and constitutional law affects the actual working of the institution,” Post said.
One of Rodríguez’s most well-known journal articles is her foreword to the November 2021 issue of the Harvard Law Review, titled “Regime Change.” In the article, Rodríguez used the most recently completed Supreme Court term to explore what she called “regime change,” or the changing of policies and constitutional interpretations between different presidential administrations.
The term, spanning the transition from President Donald Trump’s first term to the Biden presidency, was marked by shifts in legal arguments in cases the government had been arguing before the Supreme Court. Rodríguez argued that such shifts in legal positions between administrations should not be met with skepticism but instead should often be seen as “legitimate reinterpretations of law.”
In a statement to the News, Rodríguez wrote that she was “immensely excited” and called the deanship an “honor.”
“I’m looking forward to working with faculty, staff, students, and alumni and to learn of their hopes for our beloved law school. I have cherished this special community since my time as a student and throughout my many years on the faculty,” Rodríguez wrote.
“I step into this role during a pivotal time for the legal profession and the academy,” she added, “and I remain firmly committed to the core values of Yale Law School: the pursuit of ideas through research and free inquiry, intellectual curiosity and rigorous study, engagement across differences, mutual respect, and dedication to the rule of law.”
Rodríguez served as co-chair of University President Maurie McInnis’ Committee on Institutional Voice, which released an October 2024 report advising that university leaders and administrators refrain from commenting on issues of public significance except in rare circumstances.
“I think she’ll follow her own advice,” Post said.
According to Eskridge, Rodríguez is accepting of a range of ideologies and has “championed hires” across the political spectrum. In particular, Eskridge said that Rodríguez was a main supporter of the appointment of associate professor Garrett West LAW ’18, who had recently clerked for conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito LAW ’75.
Eskridge told the News he expects Rodríguez to play a “dual role” of “standing firm for our principles,” such as nondiscrimination and intellectual diversity, while lowering the temperature of “unnecessarily conflictual discourse.”
Sterling professor of international law and former Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh commended Rodríguez’s legal scholarship as broad and impressive.
“I am lucky to have known her for 27 years. In that time, I have watched Cristina become one of the country’s leading public law scholars, whose work ranges across immigration and refugee law, to administrative law, to constitutional law, federalism, and language rights,” Koh wrote.
“She has a calm, humble, collaborative, and compassionate style that accompanies an intense passion for fairness, social justice, and the rule of law,” Koh added.
Rodríguez in 2013 became the Law School’s first Hispanic tenured professor. She currently co-directs the Global Constitutionalism Seminar — which hosts an annual private forum for jurists and law professors to discuss pressing legal issues — with Law School professor Claudia Flores.
Flores wrote in an email to the News that she was “genuinely enthusiastic” for the direction Rodríguez would take as dean.
“Cristina Rodríguez brings intellectual rigor, judgment, and real institutional leadership to everything she does. In our work together on the Global Constitutionalism Seminar, which engages judges, scholars, and practitioners on complex questions of law and legal institutions, she was consistently incisive and effective,” Flores wrote.
Elizabeth Bailey LAW ’27, co-president of the Yale Law Democrats, praised the selection of Rodríguez.
“She is very fair and has sound judgment, which is important in the current political environment,” Bailey wrote. “I was lucky enough to help out with the Global Constitutionalism Seminar, which she co-directs, and it’s clear that she is well-respected by renowned judges and justices from around the world. I think it means a lot that she sees a role for Yale in the international legal community.”
Before she became dean on Sunday, Rodríguez worked with former Dean Heather Gerken as deputy dean, an important administrative role. Gerken stepped down from the deanship at the end of July to become the president of the Ford Foundation; professor Yair Listokin served as interim dean for six months.
Eskridge, who served as deputy dean from 2001 to 2002, said the deputy dean is charged with significant responsibilities such as putting the curriculum together every year and finding the right fit of professors to teach fall-semester courses for first-year law students.
In an email to the News, professor Samuel Moyn praised Rodríguez’s strong background as a legal scholar and leader.
“Dean Rodríguez is universally admired as a leader in the legal profession, as well as a brilliant scholar and a superb teacher. She is fully expected to have a storied deanship, and burnish Yale Law School’s reputation for the highest standards of intellectualism,” Moyn wrote.
Rodríguez was born in San Antonio, Texas.
Henry Liu covers Yale Law School as a staff reporter for the University desk as well as business and biotech for the City desk. Previously, he covered the graduate and professional schools. Originally from Houston, Texas, Henry is a sophomore in Morse College majoring in history.
https://yaledailynews.com/articles/cristina-rodr-guez-begins-tenure-as-dean-of-yale-law-school
