After graduating from law school at the University of Michigan, Lenora Ledwon specialized in civil litigation and labor law at the firm of Clark, Klein and Beaumont in Detroit, Michigan. She then returned to academia and received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame. After teaching Legal Writing at Mercer Law School, she moved to St. Thomas, where she teaches courses including Law & Literature, Legal Storytelling and Persuasion, Contracts, and Evidence. Her book, Law and Literature: Text and Theory, surveys the theoretical perspectives that inform the relationship between law and literature and illustrates the importance of narrative in shaping our understanding of law. She also has written articles for such journals as: Harvard Women’s Law Journal; Yale Journal of Law and Feminism; Temple Law Review; Rutgers’ Women’s Rights Law Reporter; Literature/Film Quarterly; Studies in Law, Politics, and Society; and American Indian Quarterly. She is co-editor of Law and Popular Culture, a casebook for Lexis Publishing.

Professor Robin M. Peguero, a New York Times-reviewed novelist and lawyer, spent seven years storytelling to juries for a living as a homicide prosecutor in Miami. A first-generation American raised in Hialeah – whose father and mother served in the U.S. Army after emigrating from the Dominican Republic and Ecuador, respectively – Professor Peguero graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He has written for the Miami Herald, the Harvard Crimson, and the Harvard Law Review, and – prior to becoming a lawyer – served as press spokesman for U.S. Congressman Charlie Rangel and speechwriter for U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar. He went on to serve as investigative counsel on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol and as chief of staff to U.S. Congressman Glenn Ivey.

Professor Peguero has taught at Georgetown University Law Center, University of Miami School of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, University of Miami School of Law, and now St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law, focusing on criminal law and procedure, particularly juror selection and the social dynamics of the jury. He is the author of With Prejudice (2022), a legal thriller, and One in the Chamber (2024), a political murder mystery.

Christian Lee González-Rivera is an Assistant Professor of Law at St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law on the tenure track. His teaching focuses on Constitutional Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, Conflict of Laws, and Jurisprudence. He also teaches a course and seminar on Law, Science, and Policy, where students learn to think about jurisprudence in a multidisciplinary, problem-oriented way. He is currently our College of Law’s Director for the Summer in Spain Study Abroad Program, an annual 12-credit program offering summer courses in comparative and international subjects in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain.

Professor González-Rivera’s legal scholarship currently centers on three main ongoing projects. First, the development of an originalist theory of constitutional construction that incorporates and operationalizes Law, Science, and Policy (the framework of Myres S. McDougal and Harold D. Lasswell) in our domestic adjudication process, centered around the concepts of human freedom, dignity, and flourishing. Second, a theory of state and federal police powers, especially in case of emergencies or so-called “states of exception.” And lastly, an account of the relationship between our Constitution and international law.

Professor González-Rivera has been a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center’s Center for the Constitution, where has conducted and presented some of his research and writing on emergency police powers. He is also a Visiting Professor at Universidad Panamericana, Facultad de Derecho, Mexico City Campus, where he teaches a Law, Science, and Policy Public Law Seminar.

Professor González-Rivera holds a B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Puerto Rico (magna cum laude), a Certificate of Graduate Studies in Greek and Latin Languages from the University of Vermont (magna cum laude), and a J.D. (magna cum laude) and LL.M. (summa cum laude) in Intercultural Human Rights from St. Thomas University College of Law. As a philosophy and classics student, he published and presented papers on Aristotelian Ontology and Hellenistic Ethics, focusing on the role of metaphor in philosophical argument. In law school, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review and Vice President of the School’s International Moot Court team, among other roles, publishing several law review articles on topics ranging from international law and human trafficking to federalism and jurisprudence.

Upon graduating, Professor González-Rivera served as senior law clerk to the Honorable Judge Fleur Lobree at Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal, where he managed over 200 appeals and writ petitions. Before joining STU as a full-time Assistant Professor of Law, he worked as trial and appellate counsel at the firm of Butler Weihmuller Katz & Craig LLP, primarily handling federal cases.

Vincent Ploton is a former Director of UN Treaty Body advocacy at the International Service for Human Rights, an independent, non-profit organization promoting and protecting human rights, founded in 1984, and with offices in Geneva (Switzerland) and New York (United States). He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Oxford University Press Journal of Human Rights Practice. He has worked with, and supported civil society engagement, with the UN Treaty Bodies for over fifteen years, including the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and the Human Rights Committee. His original background is in the humanitarian field. He frequently teaches courses on these and related subjects, such as human rights lawyering, as a visiting professor in a variety of programs including our own LL.M. Program in Intercultural Human Rights at St. Thomas University Benjamin L. Crump College of Law.