Co-Director, Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy)
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar works at the intersection of law, public policy, and political science. A member of the Stanford Law School faculty since 2001, he has served in two presidential administrations, testified before lawmakers, and has an extensive record of involvement in public service. His research and teaching focus on administrative law and governance, public organizations, and transnational security. He is the Co-Director of Stanford’s interdiscplinary Center for International Security and Cooperation.

During 2009-2010, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy at the White House. Among other issues, Cuéllar worked on enhancing food safety standards, improving public health agencies, law enforcement and sentencing policy, regulatory transparency, immigration, and the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. Before working at the White House, he co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition’s Immigration Policy Working Group. During the second term of the Clinton Administration, he worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Enforcement.

In July 2010, the President appointed him to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent agency charged with improving the efficiency and fairness of federal regulatory programs. From 2011 to early 2013, he co-chaired the Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission.  He is a board member of the American Constitution Society as well as the Constitution Project, a non-profit think tank that builds bipartisan consensus on constitutional and legal issues.

After graduating from Calexico High School in California’s Imperial Valley, he received an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford. He clerked for Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and is a member of the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.