Rate My Professor Matteo Taussig-Rubbo

Mateo Taussig-Rubbo is a Professor of Law and Director of the Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D.) Program at the University at Buffalo School of Law, where he has served since 2007, achieving tenure in 2013. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology since 2010. A legal anthropologist, his academic background includes a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2007, a J.D. from Yale University in 2001, an M.Phil. from King’s College, Cambridge University in 1998, and a B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1994. Earlier in his career, he served as a law clerk to Hon. Robert W. Sweet of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 2002 to 2003 and as an associate lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP from 2001 to 2002. He has received awards and fellowships including Research Grants from the Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy in 2009 and 2022, a Josephine De Kármán Trust Fellowship in 2004, a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant in 2000, an Orville H. Schell Fellowship in International Human Rights from Yale Law School in 1998, and a three-year National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship beginning in 1994.

His research interests encompass anthropology of law, comparative law, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, and social and political theory. Taussig-Rubbo examines the role of sacrifice and sacralization in neoliberal legalities, with focus on military privatization, the death penalty, and the 9/11 attacks, as well as the stranger-king tradition in postcolonial African constitutionalism. Current projects address theories of the event in climate change law and policy and the ritual dimensions of indigenous land acknowledgments. Key publications include the co-edited volume After Secular Law (Stanford University Press, 2011), "Outsourcing Sacrifice: The Labor of Private Military Contractors" in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities (2009), "Pirate Trials, the International Criminal Court and Mob Justice: Reflections on Postcolonial Sovereignty in Kenya" in Humanity (2011), "From the 'Stranger King' to the 'Stranger Constitution': Domesticating Sovereignty in Kenya" in Constellations (2012), and "Appraising 9/11: Sacred Value and Heritage in Neoliberal Times" in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law (2016). He has contributed to service as Chair of the Faculty Appointments Committee at UB Law School (2016–2017, 2022–2024), member of the UB Faculty Senate (2018–2020), Advisory Committee for the Baldy Center (2007–2012, 2020–2025), and Editorial Committee for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science (2016–2020). Taussig-Rubbo has delivered lectures such as "Theories of the Event in Climate Change Law and Policy" at UC Berkeley in 2022 and "Property Rites and Rituals: Reflections on Land Acknowledgements" at the Association of Law, Property and Society in Sydney in 2025.