Camilo Jose Baltodano

I'm a rising third-year at the University of Pennsylvania, studying English and Law & Society with a minor in Africana Studies. My interests lie at the intersection of literature, law, and sociology — and in the unspoken rules that determine who belongs in elite institutions and who does not.

My honors thesis asks why Shakespeare sits at the center of Anglo-American legal culture — and who gets left out of that tradition. Reading Shakespeare's plays as legal texts, the project examines how Shakespearean literacy has functioned as a form of cultural capital within legal institutions: a marker of elite belonging that reproduces class and racial hierarchy in ways that persist today. The thesis asks what it means that the tradition legal elites use to think about justice is built on a foundation that systematically excludes the communities most affected by criminal law.

Working alongside Professor Paul Robinson at Penn Carey Law School, I examine how criminal law derives its moral authority from its alignment with ordinary people's intuitions about justice and desert. This question of legal legitimacy sits at the heart of my broader scholarly project: if a law's credibility depends on reflecting shared intuitions of justice, what does it mean when the cultural traditions shaping those judgments have never been equally shared?

Previously, I conducted sociological research with Professor Chenoa Flippen examining wealth accumulation and homeownership in the United States. I also serve as a Writing Fellow and Tutor at Penn's Marks Family Writing Center, where I work with undergraduate writers across disciplines.

Born and raised in California — most of my life in San Luis Obispo — I come from a multiethnic background and navigate the world as a dyslexic thinker, something that has shaped how I read, write, and make arguments in ways I've come to value deeply. Outside of academics, I produce and DJ music, cook and seek out new restaurants, and spend time outdoors: hiking in Yosemite, and walking along the Schuylkill River here in Philadelphia.