Xavier Cortada earned three degrees from the University of Miami, culminating in his J.D. from the School of Law in 1991. Rather than practicing traditional law, Cortada harnessed his legal training to champion social and environmental justice, creating impactful public art across six continents. He has famously installed works at both the North and South Poles to generate awareness about climate change.
A 2024 Florida Artists Hall of Fame inductee and former Miami-Dade County Artist-in-Residence, Cortada remains deeply connected to Miami Law, collaborating with the Environmental Justice and Children & Youth Law clinics, and recently serving as an affiliated faculty member. His innovative projects, like the "Reclamation Project" and "The Underwater," earned him the 2021 National Wetlands Award from the Environmental Law Institute. Cortada’s visionary career represents a masterful fusion of law, creative activism, and global stewardship.
What aspects of the curriculum or faculty had the most significant impact on your legal education and career trajectory?
My law school experience was shaped less by any single course and more by the doors law school opened. I was a campus leader: a Senator in the Student Bar Association, president of Omicron Delta Kappa, and an officer of Iron Arrow. As National Vice Chair of the ABA Law Student Division, liaison to its Senior Lawyers Division, Fifth District Governor, and later one of only three student-elected Delegates nationwide to the American Bar Association's House of Delegates, I traveled the country in rooms full of senior lawyers, hearing firsthand how law could serve the public good, not just a career. That conviction pulled me toward public interest work while still a student: I ran for the Florida House of Representatives, chaired Miami's Youth Task Force amid Wynwood's civil unrest, and founded and led Regis House, an adolescent drug and alcohol treatment center, all before earning my J.D.
How did your education at the University of Miami School of Law prepare you for your career?
I earned my J.D. and M.P.A. together, an unusual pairing at a time when dual degrees like it barely existed, giving me a way of thinking about law, policy, and society as one system. Although I’m a member of the Florida Bar, I never practiced law traditionally, but I never stopped thinking like an advocate. Law exists to structure society and move people toward justice. I came to believe art has that same job, engaging communities and pushing policy on issues like sea-level rise. Art became my courtroom. I served as full-time faculty in the Department of Art and Art History for five years, and the law school's own faculty voted to bring me on as secondary faculty. I represented the university as an observer at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, in Glasgow, authored a Law Review article on sea-level rise, and spoke at two Law Review climate symposia.
What opportunities or connections did you gain at the law school, and how did they influence your career?
Years after graduation, I partnered with the University of Miami School of Law's Children & Youth Law Clinic to capture the voices of youth in a residential psychiatric program through murals I created with them. That work led me to join the legal team arguing a therapeutic jurisprudence case before the Florida Supreme Court, representing the perspective of one of those young people. Decades later, I returned to co-author the Clinical Law Review article "Communities that Care" with Professor Bernard Perlmutter. My artwork now graces the law school, all on long-term loan: paintings once shown at Miami-Dade's drug court hang in the law library's reading room, two works from my Cubaba series hang nearby, and another piece lives in the Environmental Justice Clinic. I also served as a director of the Law Alumni Association, and in 2024, the Law School honored me with its Daniel E. Murray Distinguished Service Award.
