Faculty Profile

Christiana Ochoa

Professor of Law and Charles L. Whistler Faculty Fellow; Director, IU Ph.D. Minor in Human Rights

Biography

Before joining the faculty in 2003, Professor Ochoa was an associate in the Banking and Finance Group at the New York office of the global law firm, Clifford Chance, where she dedicated her efforts to cross-border capital markets and asset-backed finance transactions. Ochoa has also worked for a number of human rights and non-governmental organizations in Colombia, Brazil, and Nicaragua. She has lived for extended periods in Latin America and has significant academic and other work experience in that region.

Ochoa's scholarship focuses on global governance and human rights. Her work has been published in the Harvard International Law Journal, the Virginia Journal of International Law, the Indiana Law Journal, and the Human Rights Quarterly, among others. Her research concentrates in two interconnected areas: the role of individuals in law formation and the inextricable links between global economic activity and human rights. The first of these concentrations explores the relationship between the evolving role of individuals in global governance and under international law and the doctrinal role of individuals in international law formation.

Ochoa's more recent work in this area examines the individual's participation in law formation and in civil society as means to increasing the democratic legitimacy of international law and global governance mechanisms. Her work on global economic activity and human rights has included the development of what she terms the "Odious Finance Doctrine," as well as inquiries into the complex interconnection between the proliferation of finance tools and human rights.

Selected Works

• Book review:International Human Rights Litigation in US Courts, HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY (forthcoming).
• Guatemalan Transnational Feminists: How Their Search for Constitutional Equality Interplays with International Law, in CONSTITUTING EQUALITY: GENDER EQUALITY AND COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS (Susan Williams, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2009).
• The Human Rights Potential of Sovereign Wealth Funds (with Patrick J. Keenan), 40 GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 1151 (2009).
• The 2008 Ruggie Report: A Framework for Business and Human Rights, American Society of International Law Insights, Vol. 12, Issue 12 (June 18, 2008).
• From Odious Debt to Odious Finance: Avoiding the Externalities of a Functional Odious Debt Doctrine, 49 HARVARD INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL 109 (2008).
• Guatemala's Global Feminism and its Effects on the Guatemalan Constitution, 83 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL 1333 (2008).
• The Relationship of Participatory Democracy to Participatory Law Making, 15 INDIANA JOURNAL OF GLOBAL LEGAL STUDIES 5 (2008).
• Symposium Introduction: Democracy and the Transnational Private Sector, 15 INDIANA JOURNAL OF GLOBAL LEGAL STUDIES 1 (2008).
• The Individual and Customary International Law Formation, 48 VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 119 (2007).

Related Links

• Social Science Research Network
• Curriculum Vitae
• Publications