Sol and Lillian Goldman Dean and Professor of Law Cristina M. Rodríguez ’00 will receive the Hispanic National Bar Foundation’s (HNBF) 2026 Academic Leadership Award, the organization announced on March 17. Rodríguez was previously awarded the Academic Leadership award in 2014.
The foundation acknowledges achievement and contributions by Latino members of the legal community to the profession annually in several categories.
Rodríguez’s career spans 25 years in academia and the legal profession. She joined the faculty of Yale Law School in 2013 and was named Sol and Lillian Goldman Dean and Professor of Law in 2026.
Her scholarship and teaching centers on constitutional law and theory, administrative law and process, and immigration law and policy. A widely published and influential scholar, Rodríguez has authored more than 70 academic articles and essays in the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, and numerous other scholarly journals, edited volumes, and media publications. She has been a sought-after expert by outlets including The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.
Her recent work includes a series of empirically informed papers on accountability and policymaking within administrative agencies and their relationship to democratic governance, set against the backdrop of monumental changes in administrative law. She is also the author of the book “The President and Immigration Law” (Oxford University Press, 2020), an exploration of two centuries of presidential influence over the metes and bounds of American immigration policy, with Adam B. Cox.
Throughout her career, Rodríguez has displayed a commitment to the rule of law and to public service. In 2021, former President Biden appointed Rodríguez to co-chair the bipartisan Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. From 2011 to 2013, she served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Rodriguez will receive the award as part of this year’s HNBF award ceremony on July 23 in Washington, D.C. as part of the foundation’s Future Latino Leaders Summer Law Camp.
Other honorees this this year include Sally Bergmann Hardesty of Debevoise & Plimpton’s Investment Management Group; Ryan Alvarez, general counsel at Gensler; and Steve D’Amore, chairman of Winston & Strawn LLP.
Established in 1985, the Hispanic National Bar Foundation’s mission is to help Hispanics achieve their potential through access to higher education and increase diversity in the legal profession, according to the group’s website.
