Bill Alan del Castillo Merma

Founding President of the Instituto Peruano de Derecho y Gobernabilidad (Peruvian Institute of Law and Governance). Secretary General of the Federación Peruana Unificada de Abogados (Unified Peruvian Federation of Lawyers)

About my career My name is Bill Alan de Castillo Merma, and my path in law began at the three-hundred-year-old Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (UNSAAC), where I earned the degree of Bachelor of Law and Political Science, awarded in the name of the Nation. From my earliest university years, I combined academic training with intense institutional involvement: I was a representative of the student third (tercio estudiantil) on the Council of the Faculty of Law for the 2012-2013 term, which marked the beginning of a lasting vocation for connecting legal thought with public action. Over the years I have combined academic reflection with the organization of high-level forums for legal debate, both nationally and internationally. I have chaired and coordinated congresses, conferences and specialization courses that have brought together key figures in Latin American criminal and constitutional law. Among them are the Latin American and Ibero-American Congresses of Criminal Law, which I have had the honor of leading as president or organizer, in cities such as Cusco, Tarapoto, Machala and Iquitos. On the editorial side, I have directed and edited more than ten collective legal works, among them Bases para un Derecho Penal Latinoamericano (Foundations for a Latin American Criminal Law), a book cited by various Peruvian courts in landmark rulings. That work drew on contributions from leading figures across the continent, such as Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni, a judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and it has been recognized in academic and judicial circles alike. My commitment to transforming legal thought is also reflected in the founding and presidency of the Instituto Peruano de Derecho & Gobernabilidad (Peruvian Institute of Law & Governance), an educational civil association from which we promote a critical, plural legal agenda with a transformative purpose. This has been the platform from which we have organized highly specialized programs in various branches of law: criminal, constitutional, civil, labor, administrative, arbitration and conciliation. I have received significant distinctions for my work, such as the Medal of the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia de Venezuela (Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela), membership in the Asociación Internacional de Derecho Penal (International Association of Penal Law) and in the International Peace Bureau (a Swiss organization awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1910). I have also been named an Illustrious Visitor by the Municipality of Ancahuasi and publicly commended by institutions such as the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco and the Ilustre Colegio de Abogados del Cusco (Cusco Bar Association), in recognition of my work in legal and cultural outreach. My academic and editorial work has gone beyond the university sphere: several of my books have been expressly cited by Peruvian courts in judicial decisions, forming part of the legal reasoning in complex criminal cases. This confirms that law is also built through committed thought and rigorous intellectual production.