Jorge Eduardo Barrera Rojas
Jorge Barrera Rojas
Jorge Barrera-Rojas is an incoming Visiting Assistant Professor of Law and Rodes Jr. Fellow in Law and Religion at Notre Dame Law School. He served as an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chile and the University San Sebastian, where he taught Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Constitutional Justice Clinic, and International Human Rights Law. He also is a non-resident Fellow at the Stanford Law School Constitutional Law Center. since 2021.
Professor Barrera-Rojas currently serves as Chief Counsel and Constitutional Coordinator at the office of the Majority for the Chilean Constitutional Council, the body in charge of drafting and providing Chile's new constitution, and previously worked as a Comparative and Foreign Law Counsel at the U.S. Law Library of Congress.
Professor Barrera-Rojas has practiced law for several years, first in the Chilean Congress and from 2018 to 2022 as a senior associate and later a former partner at Bofill Mir Abogados in Chile. He has been the lead attorney in several landmark cases before the Chilean Constitutional Tribunal. They include the ruling establishing that the free-tuition program for college students was unconstitutional because it discriminated against low-income students who attended private universities instead of public institutions, the ruling that granted the exercise of conscientious objection for Catholic hospitals that receive public funds, and the decision delivered in June 2021, where the Chilean Constitutional Tribunal prioritized parents' rights to educate their children declaring mandatory sexual education unconstitutional.
His publications include "Parents v. Government: The Constitutional Challenge Between the Principle of Progressive Autonomy of Children and Parents' Educational Rights in Chile," 37 Notre Dame J. L. Ethics & Pub. Pol'y 445 (2023); "Religious Persecution and Erosion of Religious Freedom in Latin America" with Ana María Celis, in 97 Notre Dame L. Rev. Reflection, 207 (2022), "Educational Adequacy: Balancing the Right to Education, Parents' Rights and Educational Freedoms Under the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights." in 55 Geo. Wash. Int'l L. Rev. ___, forthcoming, Summer 2023), and "Right to Education and Academic Freedom: Evolution of the Chilean Constitutional Tradition Before a New Constitution" with Prof. Miguel Angel Fernández, Chilean Association of Constitutional Law – in the book "Constitutional Transition: The Way to a New Constitution" Tirant Lo Blanch, Valencia, Spain, 2021. (Spanish), among others.
Professor Barrera-Rojas holds an LL.B. from Universidad de Chile (2011), an LL.M. from UCLA School of Law (2017), and he is a J.S.D. candidate at Notre Dame Law School and a Ph.D. in Law candidate at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne.
