Marcela Prieto
USC Gould School of Law

Marcela Prieto Rudolphy is an assistant professor of law at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law. Her research areas include international law, the international laws of armed conflict, and political, moral and legal philosophy. She teaches public international law, criminal law and criminal procedure.

Prieto graduated summa cum laude from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In 2015, she graduated from the LLM program at New York University, where she was an Arthur T. Vanderbilt Scholar and part of the Transitional Justice Leadership program. In 2020, she obtained her JSD degree from New York University.

Her dissertation, entitled "The Laws of War: The Fragility in Regulating Killing," won the 2021 NYU University-Wide Outstanding Dissertation Award in Social Sciences, and a revised version, entitled "The Morality of the Laws of War: War, Law, and Murder," is under contract with Oxford University Press.

From 2012-2014, Prieto worked at the Chilean Ministry of Interior (Human Rights Program) prosecuting crimes against humanity committed during Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

She is co-editor in chief of the Spanish issue of the International Journal of Constitutional Law. 

Works in Progress

• "The Morality of the Laws of War: War, Law, and Murder"
• "A World Without Forfeiture"
• "The Questions of Dignity," in Canons of Global Constitutional Law (Sujit Choudhry, Michaela Hailbronner & Mattias Kumm, eds.).
• "Transitional Justice in the 21st Century: Its History, Challenges, and Effectiveness" (with David Tolbert), in Oxford Handbook of Atrocity (Barbora Hola, Hollie Nyseth Brehm & Maartje Weerdesteijn eds.).

Publications

• "How Political Narratives Affect the Self-enforcing Nature of Interim Constitutions" (with Sergio Verdugo), 13 Hague Journal on the Rule of Law (2021). - (PDF)
• "Right-wing Populism, the Reasonable, and the Limits of Ideal Theory: A Reply to Gila Stopler," 19 International Journal of Constitutional Law (2021).   - (www)
• "The Dual Aversion of Chile’s Constitution-Making Process" (with Sergio Verdugo), 19 International Journal of Constitutional Law (2021). - (www)
• "Gender in Academic Publishing" (with Gráinne de Búrca & Michaela Hailbronner), 17 International Journal of Constitutional Law (2020). - (www)
• "Populist Governments and International Law: A Reply to Heike Krieger," 30 European Journal of International Law 997 (2019). - (www)
• "Dignidad Animal y Dignidad Humana (Animal Dignity and Human Dignity)," in Derecho Animal: Teoría y Práctica (Javier Gallego Saade & María José Chible Villadangos eds., 2018).

Other Publications

• "A Feminist Rethinking of the Chilean Constitution?" International Constitutional Law Blog, November 5, 2020.   - (www)

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Bloomberg Government
June 22, 2022
Re: Franita Tolson

Franita Tolson was interviewed about how federal lawsuits from North Carolina, Alabama, and Arkansas test the limits of the Voting Rights Act, the boundaries of state government authority, and the ability of voting rights groups to file racial gerrymandering cases. “These doctrines and approaches in these cases fundamentally reset the rules of the game,” she said. “In 2030 we will live in a completely different world than we lived in in 2020, and 2020 was not favorable to minority voters at all.”

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Robin Craig
March, 2022

"Saltwater Sovereignty: Tribal Marine Management Authority Along the Pacific Coast.” Online Environmental Law Workshop. University of Maryland School of Law, Baltimore, MD.

Daniel Klerman
March, 2022

“Comment on Choi, Erickson, & Pritchard, ‘Coalitions among Plaintiffs’ Attorneys in Securities Class Actions’,” Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, Virtual, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Robin Craig
March, 2022

“Who’s on First? The Mind-Blowing Attempt to Conceptualize Deference in the Midst of Decision Delays and Agency Repeals,” J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Environmental Law Symposium for the George Washington University School of Law, Virtual, Washington, D.C.