Professor Bernal stepped down as a sitting justice on the Colombian Constitutional Court to join the School of Law in August of 2020. In 2021 he was elected as an Inter-American Human Rights Commissioner for the term 2022-2026. Professor Bernal also holds a fractional appointment as Professor of Law at the University of La Sabana (in Bogota, Colombia), and he has previously held academic positions at Macquarie Law School (Sydney, Australia), and the Faculty of Law of the University Externado of Colombia.

Additionally, he has held visiting professorships at the Faculties of Law of the Universities of Paris I (Sorbonne) and X (Nanterre), the University of Copenhagen, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Leon (Spain). He has also held Senior Research Fellowships at the Yale Law School, the Kings’ College Law School, and the Max Plack Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg).

Professor Bernal specializes on the interpretation of constitutional rights and comparative constitutional change. He also has a focus on jurisprudence (in particular, on the intersection between social ontology and legal theory) and the philosophical foundations of tort law. His work has been published in prominent peer-reviewed journals as well as books and edited collections in English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Russian.

Prof. Bernal earned his LL.B. in 1996 from the University Externado of Colombia (Bogotá). He additionally holds an S.J.D. awarded in 2001 from the University of Salamanca (Spain) and an M.A. awarded in 2008 and Ph.D. awarded in 2011 in Philosophy from the University of Florida (U.S.A).  

The Colombian Government has awarded Prof. Bernal the Order of Boyaca and the Medal Jose Maria Cordova.