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, the James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law, 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 Michigan Law's Program in Refugee and Asylum Law and the Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Refugee Law at the University of Amsterdam. From 2008 to 2010, Professor Hathaway was on leave to serve as dean of the Melbourne Law School, where he established Australia's first all-graduate (JD) law program. Before joining the Michigan Law 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, San Francisco, Stanford, Toronto, and Tokyo. He regularly provides training on refugee law to academic, non-governmental, and official audiences around the world. Professor Hathaway's publications include The Law of Refugee Status (2014), with Michelle Foster; Transnational Law: Cases and Materials (2013), with Mathias Reimann, Timothy Dickinson, and Joel Samuels; Human Rights and Refugee Law (2013); The Rights of Refugees Under International Law (2005); Reconceiving International Refugee Law (1997); and more than 80 journal articles. He is founding patron and senior adviser to Asylum Access, a nonprofit organization committed to delivering innovative legal aid to refugees in the Global South, and counsel on international protection to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Professor Hathaway sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Refugee Studies, the Immigration and Nationality Law Reports, and reflaw.org.

Recent Publications

More Publications...

Prosecuting a Refugee for "Smuggling" Himself. University of Michigan Public Law & Legal Theory Research Paper No. 429. Working Paper.
Full Text: SSRN

The Rights of Refugees Under International Law. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming, 2019.

"Assigning Protection: Can Refugee Rights and State Preferences be Reconciled?" J. Institutional & Theoretical Econ. 175, no. 1 (2019): 33-45.
Full Text: WWW

Colloquium convener. "The Michigan Guidelines on Refugee Freedom of Movement." Mich. J. Int'l L. 39, no. 1 (2018): 5-17. (These guidelines reflect the consensus of the participants at the Eighth Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law, held at the University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, on March 31-April 2, 2017.)
Full Text: MLaw Repository | HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Lexis | Westlaw

"The Global Cop-Out on Refugees." Int'l J. Refugee L. 30, no. 4 (2018): 591-604.
Full Text: Oxford Journals (UMich users) | Oxford Journals

Review of Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System, by Alexander Betts and Paul Collier. Int'l J. Refugee L. 30, no. 1 (2018): 173-8.
Full Text: Lexis | Oxford Journals (UMich users) | Oxford Journals

Introduction to Special Feature: Eighth Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law.Mich. J. Int'l L. 39, no. 1 (2018): 1-4.
Full Text: MLaw Repository | HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Westlaw

"Dialog About a New Asylum System." Asiel & Migrantenrecht 2 (2018): 61-8.

"Afterword." In Research Handbook on Climate Change, Migration, and the Law, edited by B. Mayer and F. Crépeau. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2017.
Full Text: WWW

"What is the Meaning of State Protection in Refugee Law?: A Debate." H. Storey, co-author, Int'l J. Refugee L. 28, no. 3 (2016): 480-92.
Full Text: Lexis | WWW

Colloquium convener. "The Michigan Guidelines on Risk for Reasons of Political Opinion." Mich. J. Int'l L. 37, no. 2 (2016): 234-41. (These guidelines reflect the consensus of the participants at the Seventh Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law, held at the University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, on March 27-29, 2015.)
Full Text: MLaw Repository | HEIN (UMich Users) | HEIN | Lexis | Westlaw

"Should We Presume State Protection?" A. Macklin, co-author. Refuge 32, no. 3 (2016): 49-53.
Full Text: WWW

"A Global Solution to a Global Refugee Crisis." Eur. Papers 1, no. 1 (2016): 93-9.
Full Text: WWW

Introduction to Special Feature: Seventh Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law. Mich. J. Int'l L. 37, no. 2 (2016): 229-31.
Full Text: MLaw Repository | HEIN (UMich users) | HEIN | Lexis | Westlaw

Recently Taught Courses

Curriculum Interest Areas

Activities

Presented "The Global Cop-Out on Refugees: Why the World Needs a Bold Plan to Save Refugee Protection" at the Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, May 2019.

Participated in "Refugee Law Challenges: A Conversation with Professor James Hathaway," University of Cape Town, South Africa, April 2019.

Presented "The False Panacea of 'Thin Protection': Why We Need a Bold Plan to Save Refugee Protection" at the National University of Singapore, April 2019.

Led a discussion on "The Architecture of International Refugee Law" at the National Chengchi University School of Law, Taipei, Taiwan, April 2019.

Delivered the keynote address on "In Search of Asylum: An Interdisciplinary Discussion" at the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts Weissbourd Conference, University of Chicago, April 2019.

Delivered the keynote address on "Reconciling Refugee Law and Private International Law" at the Conference on Families Across Borders, Ghent University Faculty of Law, Ghent, Belgium, March 2019.

Delivered the keynote address on the "Continued Relevance of the 1951 Refugee Convention" at the Emory International Law Review Symposium, Atlanta, February 2019.

Participated in a panel discussion on "Detaining Refugee Children: What's at Stake?", Donia Human Rights Center, University of Michigan, November 2018.

Presented "The False Panacea of 'Thin' Protection: Why We Need a Bold Plan to Save Refugee Protection" at the University of Manitoba School of Law's Distinguished Visitors Lecture Series, Winnipeg, September 2018.

Gave the keynote address at the biennial meeting of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, Thessaloniki, Greece, August 2018.

Was a visiting professor and taught an intensive course on the Convention refugee definition and delivered a public lecture on the need for a global system of refugee burden and responsibility sharing, University of Ljubljana Faculty of Law, Slovenia, May 2018.

Presented "Is There a Duty on Refugees to Avoid Risk?" to judges of the Federal Court of Australia, Melbourne, May 2018.

Led a national simulcast conversation on refugee protection among members of the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Sydney, May 2018.

Met with refugees encamped in Nauru by Australia, advised the government on reform of its refugee laws, and trained the judges of both the refugee tribunal and Supreme Court, Nauru, May 2018.

Presented "Genocidal Intent: Responding to the Rohingya Refugee Crisis" at the New York City Bar Association and led a roundtable discussion on creative answers to current protection challenges at the UNHCR Mission to the United Nations, September 2019.

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