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Hathaway, James C.

James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law
Director, Program in Refugee and Asylum Law

970 Legal Research
734.764.2359
E-mail jch@umich.edu
James C. Hathaway is a leading authority on international refugee law whose work is regularly cited by the most senior courts of the common law world. He is the founding director of the University of Michigan's Program in Refugee and Asylum Law, Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Refugee Law at the University of Amsterdam, and Professorial Fellow of the University of Melbourne. Prof. Hathaway was on leave from 2008 to 2010 to serve as dean of the Melbourne Law School, where he established Australia's first all-graduate (JD) law program. Before joining the Michigan faculty in 1998, he was professor of law and associate dean of the Osgoode Hall Law School (Toronto), and has been appointed a visiting professor at the universities of Cairo, California, Macerata, Toronto, and Tokyo. He regularly provides training on refugee law to academic, non-governmental, and official audiences around the world.

Prof. Hathaway's publications include more than 70 journal articles, a leading treatise on the refugee definition (The Law of Refugee Status, 1991; second edition forthcoming in 2013), an interdisciplinary study of models for refugee law reform (Reconceiving International Refugee Law, 1997) and The Rights of Refugees under International Law (2005), winner of the American Society of International Law's Certificate of Merit. He is counsel on international protection to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and founding patron of Asylum Access, a nonprofit organization committed to delivering innovative legal aid to refugees in the global South. Prof. Hathaway sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Refugee Studies and of the Immigration and Nationality Law Reports and directs the Refugee Caselaw Site (www.refugeecaselaw.org), a website that collects, indexes, and publishes leading judgments on refugee law from around the world.

Recent Publications

More Publications...


Co-author. Transnational Law: Cases and Materials. T. Dickinson, M. W. Reimann, and J. Samuels. West, Forthcoming.

Co-author. The Law of Refugee Status. 2 ed. M. Foster, co-author. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, Forthcoming.

Editor. Human Rights and Refugee Law. Elgar, Forthcoming.

"Refugees and Asylum." In Foundations of International Migration Law, edited by B. Opeskin, R. Perruchoud, and J. Redpath-Cross. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012.

Co-author. "Queer Cases Make Bad Law." J. Pobjoy, co-author. N. Y. U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 44, no. 2 (2011): 315-88.
Full Text: HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN

"E.U. Accountability to International Law: The Case of Asylum." Mich. J. Int'l L. 33, no. 1 (2011): 1-7.
FUll Text: HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Lexis | Westlaw

"Leveraging Asylum." Tex. Int'l L. J. 45, no. 3 (2010): 503-45.
Full Text: SSRN | HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Lexis | Westlaw

"Pourquoi protéger de l'«arbitraire»?" Annales de Droit de Louvain 69, no. 2 (2009): 218-24. (Presented as part of Doctorats honoris causa de la Faculté. La protection contre l'arbitraire.)
Professor

Activities

Named the 2012 Jacob L. Martin Fellow at the U.S. Department of State, where he delivered the speech "Changing The Way We Protect Refugees," October 2012.

Gave keynote speech on the theme, "Making Resettlement Matter: The Global Imperative to Change the Way We Protect Refugees," during the conference on "Canada and Refugee Resettlement," Vancouver, June 2012.

Gave a guest lecture on reform of international refugee law and led a seminar for doctoral students engaged in refugee law research at Amsterdam Law School, The Netherlands, May 2012.

Led a two-day course on advanced refugee definition topics for members and staff of the Norweigan Immigration Appeals Board, Oslo, May 2012.

Gave a special seminar on cessation of refugee status to staff of the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration, Oslo, May 2012.

Addressed staff of UNHCR Headquarters on "Protection Elsewhere: What the Refugee Convention Allows (and Requires)," Geneva, May 2012.

Gave keynote address on "What is an Urban Refugee? And Does it Matter?" at UNHCR's Third Academic Network Seminar, Istanbul, May 2012.

Delivered a guest lecture entitled "Is the Dublin Regulation Really Legal?" at the Bogazici University Department of European Studies, Istanbul, Turkey, May 2012.

Delivered a two-day workshop on refugee rights to African human rights lawyers in Johannesburg, South Africa, under the sponsorship of Freedom House, Lawyers for Human Rights, and ProBono.org, with funding from USAID, May 2012.

Taught an intensive five-day Refugee Rights Workshop at the Melbourne Law School, Melbourne, Australia, May 2012.

Served as a discussant on Prof. Monica Hakimi's article, "A Functional Approach to Targeting and Detention," at the Michigan Law Review Forum, April 2012.

Delivered a faculty seminar entitled "Saving International Refugee Law" at Queen’s University Faculty of Law Kingston, Ontario, October 2011.

Delivered a speech entitled "Queer Cases Make Bad Law" to the London Migration Research Group, London School of Economics and Political Science, October 2011.

Gave a two-day workshop on the law of refugee status for Queen's University Belfast and the Law Centre of Northern Ireland, Belfast, October 2011.

Guest lecturer addressing the question, "Is the Malaysia Solution Legal?", University of Melbourne Public Seminar, Melbourne, Australia, September 2011.

Gave the inaugural address on forced migration issues to the new summer school at Northwestern University, Chicago, July 2011.

Delivered inaugural address to the First Summer Institute of the Center for Forced Migration Studies, Northwestern University, Chicago, July 2011.

Delivered a three-day course on the refugee definition to all members and staff of the Refugee Commission, Malta Office of the Refugee Commissioner, Valletta, June 2011.

Presented "Saving International Refugee Law," Maltese Ministry for Justice and Home Affairs, celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Refugee Convention, Valletta, June 2011.

Delivered a two-day training course to judges and administrative decision-makers sponsored by the Malta Office of the Refugee Commissioner in Valletta, Malta, June 2011.

Gave public speech entitled "Keeping Faith with the Refugee Convention" on the 60th Anniversary of the Refugee Convention, Trinity College Dublin, June 2011.

Presented "Keeping Faith with the Refugee Convention," Trinity College, Dublin, and the Irish Refugee Council, celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Refugee Convention, Dublin, June 2011.

Presented keynote address, "Responsibility Sharing: What the Refugee Convention Requires (and Allows)," University of Amsterdam Law School Expert Seminar on Shared Responsibility in International Refugee Law, Amsterdam, May 2011.

Presented keynote address, "Rebuilding International Refugee Law: The Next Nordic Legacy?", Nordic Asylum Law Seminar, Copenhagen, May 2011.

Presented "Why the Dublin Regulation is Illegal," Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London, May 2011.

Presented "Common Principles for Advancing a Refugee Protection Framework," Non-Governmental Workshop on the Future of Asylum Law in Nepal, and, on behalf of the UNHCR, chaired a national consultation of non-governmental organizations to achieve consensus on a model refugee law for presentation to the Government of Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepal, May 2011.

Presented "Accession, Domestication, or a Continued Legal Patchwork: Thoughts on Nepal's Future Legal Relationship to Refugees, Tribhuvan University and Nepal Bar Association, Kathmandu, Nepal, May 2011.

Presented "Learning from the Protection of Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal," UNHCR Community Forum, Chandragadi, Nepal, May 2011.

Taught an intensive LLM course, International Refugee Law: Refugee Status, Melbourne Law School, May 2011.

Presented "Why Refugee Law is the Best," Melbourne Law School Guest Lecture Series, Melbourne, May 2011.

Presented keynote address, "Saving International Refugee Law," Research Workshop on Critical Issues in International Refugee Law, York University Centre for Refugee Studies, Toronto, April 2011.

Presented "Constraints on the Choice of a Country of Asylum," Inaugural Professorial Fellow Lecture, Melbourne, December 2010.

Presented the lead paper, "What Does International Law Require of a Refugee Status Determination Procedure?", at a national symposium on refugee law reform, Toronto, October 2010.

Distinguished visiting professor of law at the University of Toronto, where he taught an advanced symposium on international refugee rights and delivered papers at the Constitutional Law Workshop ("The Lawfulness of Refugee Boat Arrivals") and at the Globalization Workshop ("Dictating Asylum: What Does International Law Allow?"), September 2010.

Delivered the keynote address, "Saving International Refugee Law," University of Tokyo's Human Security Symposium, and lectured on refugee law in the university's Human Mobility Studies Program, September 2010.

Invited to Oslo to provide three days of refugee law training to 500 members of Norway's Immigration Appeals Board, Immigration Directorate, and Department of Justice, April 2010.

Presented "The Influence of the U.S. Legal Education Paradigm on Legal Education Abroad" at the Harvard Law School and New York Law School Conference on the Future of Legal Education, New York, April 2010.

Presented "Taking the Proactive Path: The Need for Refugee Advocates to Advance a Protection Alternative" at the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre's annual general meeting, Melbourne, November 2009.

Presented "The Forgotten Freedom – Freedom From Fear: A Response to Chief Justice James Spigelman" at the Australian Academy of Law, Sydney, November 2009.

Presented "Australian Cooperation in Southeast Asia: Opportunity or Disaster?" to the Refugee Council of Australia, Melbourne, November 2009.

Presented "Do We Really Believe in Human Rights?" at the Humanitarian Crisis Hub Launch, November 2009.

Presented "The Risks of Regionalism in Refugee Law" at the Cuenca Colloquium on International Refugee Law, Cuenca, Spain, September 2009.

Presented "Making International Refugee Law Relevant Again" at the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture Annual Oration, Melbourne, June 2009.

Presented "Why Non-Refoulement is Resisted by States, and What We Can Do About It" to the Faculty of Law, University of Leiden, Netherlands, April 2009.

 
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