Originally from Monforte de Lemos, where a street is named for her grandfather Roberto Baamonde Robles, a politician and cavalry commander,[1] María Emilia Casas was born in León, where her father was the property registrar.

[3] In addition to holding the Chair of Labor Law and Social Security in Spain, she taught master's degree classes in Occupational Risk Management at the University of Salamanca.

In 1998, shortly before becoming a member of the Constitutional Court at the request of the government, she was part of the group of experts on labor standards charged with drafting the law regulating stable part-time work.

[3] On 16 December 1998, Casas was elected Magistrate of the Constitutional Court of Spain, becoming the youngest member in the institution's history,[2] and in 2004 she was named its president, becoming the first woman to hold that office.

[10] During Casas' Presidency, the Court also endorsed the constitutionality of the Comprehensive Law Against Gender Violence [es], recognizing the specific characteristics of this criminal phenomenon, the needs of protection of the victim, and the greater social reproach of aggression against the wife or partner.

In the application of the anti-discrimination law – highlighted by Inmaculada Montalbán, president of the Observatory Against Gender Violence – she followed the path marked by the commitments made by Spain at an international and European level.

[11] She was responsible for drafting the seventh and final version of the ruling on the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, after not previously achieving sufficient support in the Plenary Session of the Court.

[16] María Emilia Casas was married to the Professor of Administrative Law and advisor to the Bank of Spain, Jesús Leguina Villa (1942–2016), and has four children.