The University of Houston Law Center Faculty

Elizabeth Trujillo

Mary Ann & Lawrence E. Faust Professor of Law
Founding Director, Initiative on Global Law and Policy for the Americas

University of Houston Honors College (BA)
University of Houston Law Center (JD)

Elizabeth Trujillo is the Mary Ann & Lawrence E. Faust Professor of Law and the Founding Director of the Initiative on Global Law and Policy for the Americas.  She is currently a recipient of the Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute (spring 2025).  She was Professor of Law at Texas A&M University School of Law (2016-2019), and at Suffolk University School of Law in Boston (2007-2016) where she received the 2012 Latina Trailblazer Award by the Hispanic National Bar chapter, Massachusetts Association of Hispanic Attorneys.  She has also been a Visiting Professor at Florida State University School of Law (2005-2006), a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University Law School (2011-2012), and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Law and International Law (2015-2016).  Professor Trujillo writes and teaches in international trade and investment law, USMCA, sustainable development and energy, contracts, and international law, using comparative law methods.  Her publications, which have appeared in top 50 law reviews, books, and peer-reviewed journals, examine the relationship between international trade and investment with domestic regulatory structures, specifically in the areas of energy and the environment, sustainable development, and international consumer protection law. Her recent research focuses more specifically on the trade implications of local decarbonization strategies in national efforts to mitigate for environmental challenges.  Her recent work examines trade considerations for domestic decarbonization strategies in the context of changing international economic legal frameworks, environmental justice, and constitutional rights on nature, with an emphasis on the Americas, and on the models for international trade policy that better serve sustainable development principles.

Prior to entering academia, she worked for the Houston office of the New York law firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene and MacRae (later known as Dewey and LeBoeuf) in the areas of corporate law, project finance and international business transactions, with an emphasis on energy and Latin America.  Due to her expertise on USMCA/NAFTA, Latina America, and International Trade, she has been interviewed by media outlets including the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, CBC News, EcoAmericas, and Bloomberg BNA News. 

In 2024, she received the Global Faculty Award from the University of Houston Provost Office.  She also is the 2024-2025 recipient of the Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute where she will work on her book project on trade and sustainable development.  As GLPA director, Professor Trujillo will be co-hosting with the University of Bologna Department of Political and Social Sciences “Sustainability Week” at the University of Bologna in November 2024, where she will also present on sustainable development models in international economic law. 

This GLPA project arises from a grant from the University of Bologna, as part of its collaboration with the University of Houston Law Center.

Professor Trujillo is an elected member of the American Law Institute.

Selected Publications

Balancing Sustainability, the Right to Regulate, and the Need for Investor Protection: Lessons from the Trade Regime, 59 Boston College Law Review 2734 (2018)

Chapter on International Trade and Deep Decarbonization in the U.S. (part of U.S. Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project), LEGAL PATHWAYS TO DEEP DECARBONIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES, Michael B. Gerrard and John C. Dernbach, eds. (Environmental Law Institute publication) (2018)

Regulatory Cooperation in International Trade & its Transformative Effects on Executive Power, 25 Ind. J. of Global Legal Studies 365 (2018) (25th Anniversary Edition, by invitation only)

A Dialogical Approach to Trade and Environment, 16 JIEL 3 (Oxford University Press) (Fall 2013) (Peer Review)

COURSES:
Contracts
International Trade
NAFTA
Trade, Investment, and Development
Trends in International Law and Sustainable Development