César Rodríguez-Garavito

César Rodríguez-Garavito is Professor of Clinical Law and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. He is the founding director of the Earth Rights Advocacy Clinic, the Future of Rights and Governance Program, the Climate Litigation Accelerator, and the More Than Human Rights (MOTH) project at NYU Law. Professor Rodríguez-Garavito is a human rights and environmental justice scholar and practitioner whose work focuses on global governance, climate change, socioeconomic rights, business and human rights, Indigenous peoples' rights, and the human rights movement.

He is the Editor-in-Chief of Open Global Rights and a Faculty Associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Rodríguez-Garavito has served as a strategy advisor to leading international and domestic human rights organizations in different parts of the world. He has been an expert witness of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an Adjunct Judge of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, a member of the Science Panel for the Amazon and a lead litigator in climate change, socioeconomic rights and Indigenous rights cases. His scholarship, advocacy, and opinion pieces have been featured in numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, Reuters, National Geographic, El País and El Espectador. He has conducted field research and environmental and human rights investigations around the world, including in Brazil, India, South Africa, the Caribbean region, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, and the United States.

Rodríguez-Garavito is a member of the strategic litigation advisory board of Conectas Direitos Humanos (Brazil). He is co-editor of Cambridge University Press’s Globalization and Human Rights book series. He has served in the editorial boards of the Annual Review of Law and Social Science and the Business and Human Rights Journal, as well as in the boards of the Business and Human Rights Resource Center and WITNESS.

He has been an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Global Justice and Human Rights Program and the Center for Socio-Legal Research at the University of the Andes (Colombia). He has also served as Director of Dejusticia and has been a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, Brown University, the University of Melbourne, the University of Pretoria (South Africa), and the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil).

He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.A. from NYU’s Institute for Law and Society, an M.A. in Philosophy from the National University of Colombia, and a J.D. from the University of the Andes.

His publications include Litigating the Climate Emergency: How Human Rights, Courts and Legal Mobilization Can Bolster Climate Action (Cambridge, ed.); “Human Rights 2030: Existential Challenges and a New Paradigm for the Field” (Oxford, forthcoming); “Climatizing Human Rights: Economic and Social Rights for the Anthropocene” (Oxford, forthcoming); Business and Human Rights: Beyond the End of the Beginning (Cambridge, ed.); Radical Deprivation on Trial: The Impact of Judicial Activism on Socioeconomic Rights in the Global South (Cambridge, coaut.); Compliance with Socioeconomic Rights Judgments (Cambridge, co-ed.); Balancing Wealth and Health: the Battle over Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines in Latin America (Oxford, co-ed.); “Amphibious Sociology: Action-Research for a Multimedia World” (Current Sociology); “The Future of Human Rights: From Gatekeeping to Symbiosis” (Sur Journal); Law and Society in Latin America: A New Map (Routledge, ed.); Making it Stick: Compliance with Social Rights Judgments (Cambridge, co-ed.); “Ethnicity.gov: Global Governance, Indigenous Peoples and the Right to Prior Consultation in Social Minefields” (Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies); “Beyond the Courtroom: The Impact of Judicial Activism on Socioeconomic Rights in Latin America” (Texas Law Review); “Global Governance and Labor Rights: Codes of Conduct and Anti-Sweatshop Struggles in Global Apparel Factories in Mexico and Guatemala” (Politics & Society); and Law and Globalization from Below: Toward a Cosmopolitan Legality (Cambridge, co-ed.).