Biography
Isabel Medina, Ferris Distinguished Professor of Law, joined Loyola University New Orleans College of Law after practicing law with Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. Upon graduating cum laude from Tulane Law School, she clerked for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. She was a managing editor of the Tulane Law Review. She teaches constitutional law, race and gender bias law, and immigration and citizenship law, emphasizing experiential and online learning methodologies. She has visited at the University of Athens (Fulbright Scholar), Tulane Law School, Villanova University School of Law and Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She is a native of Cuba whose first language was Spanish. She is a naturalized U.S. citizen. She is the proud mother of three children and the grandmother of one. She attended the GO-LILA I workshop and is delighted to be on the planning committee for GO-LILA II.
She served as co-chair of the Constitutional Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools in 2014 and is a past chair of the Immigration Law Section. She has organized a number of conferences on gender-based violence, constitutional and immigration issues. Currently, she serves as Chair of the Loyola University Senate. She is the 2018 Dux Academicus Award recipient, awarded by Loyola University New Orleans for excellence in teaching, superiority in scholarship and outstanding general contribution to the University and the community at large. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute.
She writes in the area of race, gender, immigration, and constitutional law and her articles have appeared in the Connecticut Law Review, the George Mason Law Review, the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, the Indiana Law Journal, the Louisiana Law Review and the Harvard Latinx Law Review. Her publications include a chapter on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s opinions on citizenship and immigration for the 2023 New York University Press book Ryan Vacca and Ann Bartow, editors, “The Jurisprudential Legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg;” “Migration Law in the United States” (Kluwer 2d. ed. 2021) and “Loyola University New Orleans College of Law: A History” (LSU Press 2016). She contributed a feminist rewriting of the US Supreme Court case Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales in Linda Berger, Bridget Crawford, and Kathy Stanchi, editors, “U.S. Feminist Judgments” (Cambridge University Press 2016).
