Biography
Raul Sanchez Urribarri is a Visiting Fellow at the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law at Stanford Law School. He is an incoming Professor of Law at Western Sydney University, and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Legal Studies at La Trobe University (Melbourne).
His research lies at the intersection of comparative law and politics, focusing on judicial politics, constitutionalism, the rule of law, and legal institutions under democratic erosion and authoritarianism. His longstanding work on Venezuela examines the transformation of courts and legal institutions during democratic decline and authoritarian consolidation. His broader comparative research explores judicial behavior, informal institutions, authoritarian legality, and the resilience of legal institutions under political pressure.
He is co-editor of Judicial Activism in Comparative Perspective (Peter Lang, 2024), Informality and Courts: Comparative Perspectives (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), and Authoritarian Consolidation in Times of Crisis: Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro (Routledge, 2025). His work has appeared in The Journal of Politics, Law & Social Inquiry, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, International Political Science Review, Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, and Latin American Research Review, among others.
Sanchez Urribarri has held visiting appointments at UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Law and Society, the American Bar Foundation, iCourts at the University of Copenhagen, and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Earlier, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tulane University.
He is a co-editor of Thesis Eleven (Sage) and has held leadership positions in the Latin American Studies Association, including as Chair of its Venezuelan Studies and Political Institutions sections. He is Co-Chair of the recently created Venezuela Chapter of the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S), and Deputy Director fhe Teaching and Learning Section of the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA).
Sanchez Urribarri holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of South Carolina, an LLM from the University of Cambridge, and a law degree, cum laude, from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas, Venezuela.
