Victor Romero
Interim Dean, Penn State Law and the School of International Affairs; Maureen B. Cavanaugh Distinguished Faculty Scholar; and Professor of LawVictor Romero is the interim dean at Penn State Law and the School of International Affairs. Dean Romero’s research emphasizes the law's impact on marginalized groups. He is especially interested in borders and boundaries — both legal and cultural — and how these function. He has written on immigration policy and individual rights and analyzed Supreme Court and other federal court opinions through the lens of post-Brown v. Board of Education notions of equality and discrimination. His inquiries also intersect other disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, including history, social psychology, critical race theory, cultural studies (e.g., constructing Filipinx identity), Christianity, and criminal justice. An elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI), Dean Romero has written two books, co-edited a three-volume anthology, and published numerous law review articles, book chapters, and essays. A former advisory board member of Penn State’s Africana Research Center, Professor Romero previously served as president of both the South Central Pennsylvania Chapter of the ACLU and the NAACP of the Greater Carlisle Area. He has also served as an academic dean at Penn State Law and as a visiting professor of law at Howard and Rutgers. Upon graduating from USC Law, where he served as an editor of the Southern California Law Review, Professor Romero worked in private practice and as a law clerk to a federal judge in Los Angeles before he began teaching. |
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814-865-8989
Romero’s Publications
Selected Works
“Interracial Coalition Building: A Filipino Lawyer in a Black-White Community,” 127 Dickinson L. Rev. 767 (2023).
“Asian American Allyship,” 11 Indiana J. L. & Soc. Equality 162 (2023).
“All the Presidents’ Dreamers: Immigration Reform That Biden and Trump Can AgreeOn (and Why That Reform May be Elusive),” 9 Belmont L. Rev. 317 (2022).
“Racism, Incorporated: Ramos v. Louisiana and Jogging While Black,” 30 S.Cal. Interdisciplinary
Journal 101 (2021).
“Servant Leadership and Presidential Immigration Politics: Inspiration from the Foot Washing Ritual,” 26 Washington & Lee J. of Civil Rts. & Social Justice 147 (2019).
“The Power of Exclusion: Congress, Courts, and the Plenary Power,” in Compassionate Migration and Regional Policy in the Americas (S. Bender & W. Arrocha, eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
“The Prodigal Illegal: Christian Love and Immigration Reform,” 92 Denver Law Review 917 (2015) (symposium).
“Elusive Equality: Reflections on Justice Field’s Opinions in Chae Chan Ping and Fong Yue Ting,” 68 Oklahoma Law Review 165 (2015) (symposium).
“The Criminalization of Undocumented Migrants,” in Hidden Lives and Human Rights in the United States: Understanding the Controversies and Tragedies of Undocumented Immigration (Lois Lorentzen, ed., Praeger Press, 2014).
“Our Illegal Founders,” 16 Harvard Latino Law Review 147 (2013).
“Loving Across the Miles: Binational Same-Sex Marriages,” in Loving in a ‘Post-Racial’ World: Rethinking Race, Sex and Marriage (Kevin Maillard & Rose Cuison Villazor, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2012).
“Decriminalizing Border Crossings,” 38 Fordham Urban Law Journal 273 (2010) (symposium).
“Christian Realism and Immigration Reform,” 7 Univ. of St. Thomas Law Journal 310 (2010) (symposium).
Everyday Law for Immigrants (Routledge, 2009).
“Who Should Manage Immigration — Congress or the States?: An Introduction to Constitutional Immigration Law,” in Immigrant Rights in the Shadows of United States Citizenship (Rachel Ida Buff, ed., NYU Press 2008).
Alienated: Immigrant Rights, The Constitution, and Equality in America (NYU Press, 2005).
“The Child Citizenship Act and the Family Reunification Act: Valuing the Citizen Child as Well as the Citizen Parent,” 55 Florida Law Review 489 (2003) (symposium).
“Aren’t You A Latino?: Building Bridges Upon Common Misperceptions,” 33 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 837-849 (Summer 2000) (symposium).
Immigration and the Constitution (3 volumes) (co-edited with G. Chin & M. Scaperlanda, Routledge, 2001).
“The Domestic Fourth Amendment Rights of Undocumented Immigrants: On Guitterez and the Tort Law-Immigration Law Parallel,” 35 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 57 (2000).
“Equal Protection Held Hostage: Ransoming the Constitutionality of the Hostage Taking Act,” 91 Northwestern Univ. Law Review 573 (1997).
Penn State Dickinson Law and Penn State Law are reunifying to operate as Penn State University’s single law school, which will be known as Penn State Dickinson Law. While ABA approval for the reunification is pending, both schools are currently fully accredited. We submitted an application for acquiescence to operate as a single law school in July 2024 and plan to enroll a unified class in Fall 2025. Once reunification is complete, the separate faculties of each school will be members of the reunified Penn State Dickinson Law faculty.