Professor César Rosado Marzán Wins Best Book of the Year Award from the Bar Association of Puerto Rico

Professor César F. Rosado Marzán of Chicago-Kent College of Law and Professor Sergio Gamonal C. of Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile have been selected to receive the Simón Bolívar best book of the year award from the Bar Association of Puerto Rico (Colegio de Abogados y Abogadas de Puerto Rico). Their book—Principled Labor Law: U.S. Labor Law through a Latin American Method—was published in May 2019 by Oxford University Press.

“Professor Rosado Marzán is so deserving of this recognition,” says Dean Anita K. Krug. “His important book elucidates both the significance of Latin American legal principles for advancing law and the important role of law in protecting some of the most vulnerable in society.”

Rosado Marzán will accept the award on September 12 during the Bar Association of Puerto Rico’s 179th annual convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the Hotel Caribe Hilton. 

“The Colegio de Abogados y Abogadas is my professional home, in my country, Puerto Rico,” says Rosado Marzán. “It has many ‘compañeros y compañeras’ lawyers who I respect dearly. It is an immense honor to receive this award, alongside Sergio, recognizing our contribution to Latin American law, and law generally.”

In their award-winning book, Rosado Marzán and Gamonal C. look at four labor law principles written into the constitutions of many Latin American countries—the protective principle, primacy of reality, the non-waiver principle, and continuity of employment—and explain how these principles can be applied to United States labor laws. Drawing on the scholarship of Thirteenth Amendment scholars, the authors argue that the Thirteenth Amendment wasn’t just aimed at ending chattel slavery but was also supposed to end other forms of servitude.

“Sergio and I try to convey to the reader that Latin America, despite being in the ‘Global South,’ has been, and continues to be, a jurisdiction that gives law to the world, and does not just take or copy law from the ‘Global North,’” explains Rosado Marzán. “We also try to drive the idea that protecting weaker parties, as are workers, is a fundamental part of Latin American law. The clear and rather simple way this idea is operationalized in the region can help other jurisdictions interested in protecting weaker parties—which is really a rather universal idea present in all major world religions and legal doctrines—makes that aspiration a more concrete reality.”

A sociologist and attorney, Rosado Marzán joined the Chicago-Kent faculty in 2008 and became a full professor in 2019. He is co-director of Chicago-Kent’s Institute for Law and the Workplace and teaches Contracts, Employment Relationships, International and Comparative Labor and Employment Law, and Labor Law. Before joining the faculty, Rosado Marzán practiced union-side labor law in New York and Puerto Rico.