Dr. Marcela Prieto

Biography

Marcela Prieto Rudolphy is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law. Her research areas include International Law, International Laws of Armed Conflict, Comparative Constitutional Law, and Political and Moral Legal Philosophy. She teaches courses in Public International Law and Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure. Prieto graduated summa cum laude from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and earned an LLM from New York University, where she was an Arthur T. Vanderbilt Scholar as part of the Transitional Justice Leadership program. In 2020, she obtained her JSD degree from New York University, with a dissertation titled "The Laws of War: Fragility Regulating Killing," which won the 2021 NYU University-Wide Outstanding Dissertation Award in Social Sciences. Her book, "The Morality of Laws of War: Law, Murder," published by Oxford University Press in 2023, received the 2023 ABILA New Author Award. Between 2012 and 2014, Prieto worked at the Chilean Ministry of Interior in the Human Rights Program, prosecuting crimes against humanity committed during Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship. She is also the co-editor-in-chief of the Spanish issue of the International Journal of Constitutional Law.

Research Interests