Dr. Mónica Castillejos-Aragón is a lecturer in comparative law and international law. She has spent her career as an international human rights lawyer, working globally to advance access to justice and the rule of law with special emphasis on courts, international tribunals, and people-centered justice in comparative perspectives.
Since 2018, she has managed the rule of law and international justice portfolio of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation at the United Nations liaison office in New York, where she has gained wide-ranging experience promoting the rule of law, universal jurisdiction, peace-building, and United Nations-related projects. She has served as a senior legal advisor to UN independent experts, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. She held that role for five years and played a key part in drafting multiple UN thematic reports on contemporary challenges to the independence of justice worldwide including contemporary challenges on the independence of justice, access to women to the administration of justice, the independence of public prosecutors, and lawyers at risk⎯among others. She has written interventions filed before international human rights tribunals.
Mónica worked as a clerk at the Supreme Court of Mexico for four years, and thereafter served as an attorney at the Attorney General’s Office. She has worked for human rights organizations devoted to seeking accountability for crimes committed in international and non-international armed contexts. She has lectured and participated in initiatives and programs to strengthen the rule of law at domestic and international levels.
She has published on a variety of topics, including comparative constitutional law, international human rights law, and international public law topics. Her work appears in Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Springer Nature, Brill | Nijhoff, Elgar Publishing, and human rights journals. She has been awarded prestigious scholarships for her academic and research merits.
Trained as a social scientist, she holds Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.) and Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, where she was selected to join 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 ITAM Department of Law (Licenciada en Derecho) and has been a licensed attorney in Mexico since 2005.
