Professor Contesse received his L.L.M. from Yale Law School where he was a Fulbright Scholar and an editor of the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, and is a J.S.D. candidate. He has been a Crowley Fellow in International Human Rights at Fordham University School of Law, a visiting professor at the University of Miami School of Law, a visiting resource professor at the University of Texas School of Law, and an assistant professor at Diego Portales University School of Law in Santiago Chile, from which he received his degree in law and social science. Prior to joining the Rutgers' faculty in 2013, Contesse held an appointment as a visiting fellow at Yale Law's Schell Center for International Human Rights. He served as a board member on the National Human Rights Institute in Santiago, Chile.

Contesse has lectured widely on international human rights developments in the inter-American human rights system. He also has edited four books on human rights in Chile and is the author of several articles on constitutional theory and international human rights law. His article, "Transnational Conversations: International Law and Domestic Adjudication" (with Fernando Basch) will be included in Latin American Casebook: Courts, Rights and the Constitution (forthcoming, Ashgate Publishing). Professor Contesse has litigated and acted as expert witness in cases before both the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on issues regarding sexual orientation, the use of anti-terrorist laws, freedom of expression and the rights of indigenous peoples.