Are you interested in working in government or politics? Then perhaps you've considered some of the tricky ethical terrain that people in these realms must navigate in their jobs. What is your responsibility to those you serve? How do you fulfill that responsibility in an ethical way, especially in the face of competing interests and stakeholders? Or, as a voter, how do you evaluate the "rightness" of decisions made by your elected officials? Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar of Stanford Law School has extensive work experience in the White House and other government positions, and he will join Stanford’s Dean for Religious Life and attorney Scotty McLennan to discuss these issues surrounding the ethics of working in government.
This event is open only to Stanford undergrads and graduate students.
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar works at the intersection of law, public policy, and political science. A member of the Stanford Law School faculty since 2001, he is currently the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science, and the Director of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His research and teaching focus on administrative law, executive power, and how organizations implement regulatory responsibilities involving public health and safety, migration, and international security in a changing world. In July 2010, the President appointed him to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent agency charged with improving the efficiency and fairness of federal regulatory programs. From 2011 to early 2013, he co-chaired the Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission. From early 2009 through the summer of 2010, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy at the White House. In this capacity, he led the Domestic Policy Council’s work on criminal justice and drug policy, public health and food safety, regulatory reform, borders and immigration, civil rights, and rural and agricultural policy. Among other issues, Cuéllar worked on stricter food safety standards, the FDA’s regulatory science initiative, expanding support for local law enforcement and community-based crime prevention, strengthening border coordination and immigrant integration, and the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. Before working at the White House, he co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition’s Immigration Policy Working Group. During the second term of the Clinton Administration, he worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Enforcement, where he focused on countering financial crime, improving border coordination, and enhancing anti-corruption measures. He is on the Board of Directors of the Constitution Project, a non-profit think-tank that builds bipartisan consensus on significant constitutional issues. He clerked for Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.