Rose Cuison-Villazor
Professor of Law, and Chancellor's Social Justice Scholar
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) in Newark. Professor Cuison-Villazor is also Director of the Center for Immigrant Justice.
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 Immigrant Justice, which conducts publicly engaged research and policy work on progressive immigration and citizenship laws. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
Her overall research agenda examines the extent to which laws, policies, and norms include and exclude individuals and groups from membership. She teaches and writes in the areas of immigration and citizenship law, property law, and race and the law.
Professor Cuison-Villazor’s scholarship has appeared in top law journals in the country, including California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review Forum, Michigan Law Review, and New York University Law Review. She is working on a monograph, Forbidden Love: How Immigration Laws Barred Interracial Marriages (NYU Press, forthcoming 2026), and a co-authored book, AsianCrit at the Intersection (with Bob Chang).
She is also co-author and co-editor of two edited volumes, Legislating a New America: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and Its Contributions to Law and Society (with Gabriel “Jack” 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).
In addition, she is co-author of three casebooks, including Immigration and Citizenship, Process and Policy (10th Ed.) (with T. Alexander Aleinikoff, David A. Martin, Hiroshi Motomura, Maryellen Fullerton, Juliet Stumpf, and Pratheepan Gulasekaram) (forthcoming 2026); Integrating Spaces: Property, race, and Identity (with Al Brophy and Kali Murray) (2023); and Race and Races, Cases and Resources for a Diverse America (4th Ed.) (with Juan Perea, Richard Delgado, and Osamudia James) (2022).
Prior to joining the Rutgers Law School faculty, Professor Cuison-Villazor served on the faculty at the University of California Davis School of Law, Hofstra Law School, and Southern Methodist University School of Law. She has served as a Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, Fellow in Residence at NYU School of Law’s Birnbaum Women Leadership Center, and Visiting Scholar at the University of California Berkeley School of Law Center for Law.
Professor Cuison-Villazor obtained her LL.M from Columbia Law School and J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law.
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).