Patricia M. Santana Nina is a lawyer, litigator, and independent consultant specialized in constitutional law, administrative law, judicial law, and gender issues. She graduated from the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM)’s Law School, and received specialized training from the University of Salamanca, the University of Castilla-La Mancha, the National School of the Judiciary (ENJ), the Judicial School of Spain, the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Argentina, and the Ibero-American University (UNIBE).

She is also a university professor at PUCMM’s Law School and other universities, teaching constitutional law, constitutional procedural law, and administrative law.

She is the first female lawyer promoting strategic litigation for the defense of human rights in the Dominican Republic.

In 2025, together with Anderson Dirocie De León and a team of specialists, she designed and promoted the action by which the Dominican Constitutional Court issued ruling TC-01225-25, which constituted a historic national milestone, as it was the first time that the country’s highest court recognized sexual orientation as a protected category and declared unconstitutional the criminalization of police and military personnel for having sexual relations with persons of the same sex, affirming that such provisions violated equality, human dignity, privacy, and free development of personality.

She represented more than 40 women activists in different political parties when she designed and submitted, in 2023, an action of unconstitutionality against an electoral rule that hindered the effectiveness of the equity quota in the participation of women and men in candidacies for elected office in the Dominican Republic, obtaining a favorable ruling that impacted the 2024 national elections by increasing the representation of women in the Chamber of Deputies of the National Congress.

She has also successfully participated as an intervener and through various amicus curiae briefs in several constitutional challenges to defend laws that criminalize femicide and define protection orders for victims of gender-based violence, as well as to defend affirmative action policies for women and girls in vulnerable situations, racialized persons, and LGBTIQ persons.

She represents the Center for Research on Women’s Action (CIPAF) as spokesperson and secretary of the Network of Observers for Institutionality (ROI), created in October 2023 with the aim of ensuring that the National Council of the Magistracy (CNM) respects due process, criteria for the suitability of candidates, and the principle of balanced participation of women and men in the appointment of judges to the high courts and the Attorney General of the Republic.

Since 2024, she has been a member of the Committee of Independent Experts of the Advisory Council of the Ibero-American Network of Women Mediators (RIMM), created in line with the Women, Peace and Security agenda of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). She is also a member of the Dominican chapter of the Ibero-American Institute of Constitutional Law. In addition, she belongs to the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM), the Network of Lawyers of Central America and the Dominican Republic for the Right to Choose, the Latin American Consortium Against Unsafe Abortion (CLACAI), and its Legal Network.