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Juan Cartagena
General Counsel & Vice President for AdvocacyJuan Cartagena has been a member of the CSS senior management team since 1991, identifying opportunities to advance the CSS agenda through litigation and legal intervention strategies in all substantive areas of CSS’s policy, direct service, and community organizing work. A constitutional and civil rights lawyer, at CSS Mr. Cartagena continues to manage a public interest litigation staff while engaging in policy analysis and advocacy and supervising a staff of policy experts who conduct strategic research, polling, and policy analysis on issues including economic security, workforce development, affordable housing, youth policy, and mass imprisonment and prisoner reentry issues.
“Working at CSS ensures that my professional career maintains its relevancy to social justice and justifies my ability to return on the investments made in me by the legions of Black and Latino civil rights and human rights leaders in this country.”
Juan Cartagena has written extensively on a number of legal issues, including voting rights, Latino participation in politics and elections, felon disenfranchisement, redistricting, the court system, and criminal justice.
His publications include chapters in Behind Bars: Latinos/as and Prison in the United States, ESL n America: Myths and Possibilities and Civil Rights Litigation and Attorneys Fess Annual Handbook, as well as articles for the University of Southern California Review of Law & Social Justice, CENTRO Journal, the International Review of Contemporary Law, Latino Studies, and the Rutgers Race and the Law Review. He has also written op-eds for El Diario – La Prensa, New York Newsday, and the Daily News.
Juan Cartagena is Chair of the New York Office of Children & Family Services Independent Review Board and was a member of the New York Governor’s Task Force on Transforming New York State’s Juvenile Justice System and the New Jersey Governor’s Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Immigrant Policy. He has received additional appointments to commissions and task forces by the New Jersey Supreme Court, the Governor of New York, and the New Jersey Attorney General.
Among his many honors and awards are the Jane Marks Murphy Prize, Columbia Law School, 1981; the Freedom Fighter Award from the Jersey City NAACP in 1986; the Don Pedro Albizu Campos Award from the Jersey City Borinquen Lions Club in 1995; the Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice Award from Dartmouth College in 2003; the Felix Fishman Award from the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest in 2006; and the Legal Services Award from the New York City Bar Association in 2008.
Prior to joining CSS, he was the legal director in the New York Office of the Department of Puerto Rican Community Affairs in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and an attorney at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Education Fund. He also served as a municipal court judge in Hoboken, New Jersey.
From 1992 to the present, Mr. Cartagena has been a part-time lecturer at Rutgers University, Department of Latino & Hispanic Caribbean Studies. He teaches the course "Law and the Latino Community in the U.S."
Mr. Cartagena received his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law and his B.A. from Dartmouth College.
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