The professional accomplishments of Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuellar are featured in this Appellate Strategist article by Matthew A. Reed, with a focus on the possibility of Cuellar appearing on the California Supreme Court short list.

Appellate Strategist’s survey of potential nominees to the California Supreme Court begins with Mariano-Florentino Cuellar. Cuellar graduated from Calexico High School in Calexico, California. After earning a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 3 years (magna cum laude, 1993), he received a Master’s degree in political science from Stanford in 1996, followed by a law degree from Yale in 1997, and a Ph.D. from Stanford in 2000. He then served as law clerk to Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Since the culmination of his clerkship in 2001, Cuellar has been a professor at Stanford Law School, first as an Assistant/Associate Professor and then, since June 2007, as a Full Professor and Deane F. Johnson Faculty Scholar. According to his faculty biography, his work at Stanford involves “the intersection of law, public policy, and political science.” His courses deal with issues of administrative law, regulation and bureaucracy, executive power, and national security.

Professor Cuellar’s tenure at Stanford has included governmental, as well as academic, endeavors. In fact, even before he assumed his faculty position at Stanford, he interrupted his Ph.D. program to serve as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary (Enforcement) of the Treasury from 1997 to 1999, in which role he focused on financial crime enforcement, terrorism financing countermeasures, immigration, and border security. In 2008 and 2009, he served as Co-Chair of the Immigration Policy Working Group for the Obama-Biden Transition Project, where he worked to formulate policies on immigration, borders, and refugees. In 2009 and 2010, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy, in which role he led the White House Domestic Policy Council’s work on criminal justice and drug policy; civil rights and liberties; immigration, borders, and refugees; public health and safety; rural development and agriculture policy; and regulatory reform.

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