Speaker details

Biography

Dr. Mónica Castillejos-Aragón is a comparative law and international criminal law lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law. She has a distinguished career as an international human rights lawyer, having worked globally to promote the rule of law and international justice. Her research focuses mainly on courts and tribunals, politics, and judicial independence in fragile democracies and post-conflict societies. Her international law work also includes managing the rule of law and international justice portfolio for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation at its United Nations liaison office in New York. Through various UN-related projects, she has gained extensive experience in advancing the rule of law, promoting global justice, transitional justice, and fostering peacebuilding. Additionally, she has served as a senior legal advisor to independent experts in the United Nations, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. Mónica has also worked with and advised human rights organizations to ensure accountability for crimes committed during international and non-international armed conflicts. She has authored interventions before international human rights tribunals and lectured widely on the exercise of universal jurisdiction. Recently, she authored a study titled “The Road to Koblenz Trials: Pathways for International Justice Through the Exercise of Universal Jurisdiction in Germany” (2024). The study focuses on the role of domestic courts in ensuring accountability for the commission of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Syria. Trained as a social scientist, Mónica holds a Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.) and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. She was selected to participate in the prestigious “Mellon Sawyer Seminar on the Dilemmas of Judicial Power in Comparative Perspective” in 2007 and 2008 at the Center for the Study of Law and Society. She graduated cum laude from the ITAM Department of Law (Licenciada en Derecho) and has been a licensed attorney in Mexico since 2005. Before joining Berkeley Law, Dr. Castillejos-Aragón clerked for four years at the Supreme Court of Mexico and subsequently spent three years as a deputy legal director and supervising attorney at Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office.