Professor of Law and Chancellor's Social Justice Scholar
Rose Cuison-Villazor
Rutgers Law School
S.I. Newhouse Center for Law and Justice
123 Washington Street
Newark, NJ 07102
973-353-3159

Rose Cuison-Villazor is Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar at Rutgers Law School where she previously served as Interim Co-Dean (2021-2023) and Vice Dean (2019-2021). Professor Cuison-Villazor is also Director of the Center for Immigration Law, Policy, and Social Justice.

  • Biography
  • Publications
  • Courses Taught
  • Expertise
Biography

Rose Cuison-Villazor is Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar at Rutgers Law School where she previously served as Interim Co-Dean (2021-2023) and Vice Dean (2019-2021). Professor Cuison-Villazor is also Director of the Center for Immigration Law, Policy, and Social Justice, which conducts publicly engaged research and policy work on behalf of noncitizens and their families.

Professor Cuison-Villazor will be on sabbatical during the 2023-2024 academic year. During that academic year, she will serve as a Fellow in Residence at the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law and may be reached at rose.villazor@nyu.edu. While at BWLC, she will work on a book project that explores the extent to which mid-20th century immigration, military, and citizenship laws deployed race and gender to separate mixed-race families from living together in the United States.

Professor Cuison-Villazor’s overall research agenda examines laws, policies, and norms that determine membership and belonging. She teaches and writes in the areas of immigration and citizenship law, property law, critical race theory, Asian Americans and the law, U.S. territorial law, and equal protection law.  

Prior to joining Rutgers Law School in 2018, Professor Cuison-Villazor taught at the University of California Davis School of Law. She has also served on the faculty of Maurice A. Dean School of Law at Hofstra University and Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. Cuison-Villazor has also visited at Columbia Law School and served as a Visiting Scholar at the Columbia Law School Center for the Study of Law and Culture and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California Berkeley Center for Law and the Humanities.

Professor Cuison-Villazor obtained her LL.M from Columbia Law School and J.D. from American University.

Publications

Professor Cuison-Villazor's published or soon-to-be-published law review articles include, "Rejecting Citizenship," in the Michigan Law Review (2022), "Anti-Sanctuary and Immigration Localism," in the Columbia Law Review (2019), “Sanctuary Networks,” in the Minnessota Law Review (2018), Problematizing the Protection of Culture in the Insular Cases, in the Harvard Law Review Forum (2018), “American Nationals and Interstitial Citizenship,” in the Fordham Law Review (2017), “The Undocumented Closet,” in the North Carolina Law Review (2013), “The Other Loving: Uncovering the Federal Regulation of Interracial Marriages,” in the New York University Law Review (2011), “Rediscovering Oyama v. California: At the Intersection of Property, Race and Citizenship,” in the Washington University Law Review (2010), and "Blood Quantum Land Laws: The Race versus Political Identity Dilemma," in the California Law Review (2008).   She has also been published in the Southern California Law Review, University of California at Davis Law Review, Southern Methodist University Law Review, Chicago-Kent Law Review and other journals.  She has previously taught at Hofstra Law School and SMU Law School and has served as a Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School and UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for the Study of Law and Society. 

Her books include PROPERTY AND IDENTITY (with Kali Murray, Al Brophy, and Alberto Gonzalez) (forthcoming 2023); RACE AND RACES, CASES AND RESOURCES FOR A DIVERSE AMERICA (3rd Ed.)(with Juan Perea, Richard Delgado, and Osamudia James) (2022); THE IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT OF 1965: LEGISLATING A NEW AMERICA (with Gabriel Chin) (Cambridge University Press) 2015); and LOVING V. VIRGINIA IN A POST-RACIAL WORLD: RETHINKING RACE, SEX, AND MARRIAGE (with Kevin Maillard) (Cambridge University Press 2012).

Courses Taught
  • PROPERTY LAW
  • CRITICAL RACE THEORY
  • IMMIGRATION LAW
Expertise
  • Civil Rights
  • Civil Rights & Civil Liberties
  • Constitutional Law
  • Immigrant Rights
  • Immigration Law
  • Land Use
  • Legal History
  • Property