Every year, The Wayne Law Review hosts leading scholars from across the world to
participate in a live event addressing a timely and relevant legal issue. This annual symposium is meant to educate the public at large, provide relevant information for local and national decision makers, facilitate a forum for open and informative discussion, as well as strengthen the reputations of The Law Review and Wayne State University Law School as leading academic organizations. The live event is combined with a published Symposium edition of The Law Review, where invited scholars often address the chosen topic in greater detail in the form of an article or essay.
2010 Symposium:
The Wayne Law Review is pleased to announce its Annual Symposium in the Law entitled "Immigration Reform: Problems, Possibilities, and Pragmatic Solutions," to be held on Thursday, February 4, 2010 in the Spencer M. Patrich Auditorium at Wayne State University Law School.
Since the 2008 election, in which a large majority of Hispanic voters cast their ballot for Barack Obama, immigration rights groups have been pushing the new administration hard to make good on its promise to enact comprehensive immigration reform. It now appears that the President is planning to address immigration legislation sometime in 2010. Given the new administration and new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, this Symposium will ask: What are the politically feasible options for immigration reform, and in an “ideal” world outside the universe of politically feasible options, what would immigration reform look like?
Confirmed speakers for the Symposium include:
Dean Kevin R. Johnson, UC-Davis School of Law
Kevin R. Johnson is Dean, Professor of Law and Chicana/o Studies, and the Mabie-Apallas Public Interest Law Chair at the University of California at Davis. He has published extensively on immigration law and policy, racial identity, and civil rights in national and international journals. Dean Johnson's book How Did You Get to Be Mexican? A White/Brown Man's Search for Identity was published in 1999 and was nominated for the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. More recently, Dean Johnson published Opening the Floodgates: Why America Needs to Rethink Its Borders and Immigration Laws (2007). He has also published A Reader on Race, Civil Rights, and American Law: A Multiracial Approach (2001), Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader (2002), and The "Huddled Masses" Myth: Immigration and Civil Rights (2004).
Angela Banks, Assistant Professor of Law, William & Mary Law School
Professor Banks will discuss deportation and institutional allocation of authority. She is a
graduate of Harvard Law School, where she served on the Harvard Law Review and the Harvard International Law Journal. Prior to law school Professor Banks studied at the University ofOxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies as a Marshall Scholar, where she earned a Master ofLetters in Sociology. Prior to joining the faculty at William & Mary Law School, ProfessorBanks was the Reginald F. Lewis Fellow for Law Teaching at Harvard Law School. She has alsoserved as a legal advisor to Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald at the Iran-United States ClaimsTribunal, an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C., and as law clerk forJudge Carlos F. Lucero of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Pratheepan (Deep) Gulasekaram, Assistant Professor of Law, Santa Clara Law School
Professor Gulasekaram will discuss federal and state solutions to immigration-rights problems. He previously served as Acting Assistant Professor at New York University School of Law and Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Loyola University New Orleans Law School. He has practiced law with O'Melveny & Meyers LLP and Susman Godfrey LLP in Los Angeles, California. His articles have appeared in journals including the Iowa Law Review and the Washington Law Review. He is also the founder of the World Children's Initiative, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving medical and educational systems for children in developing areas.
Huyen Pham, Professor of Law, Texas Wesleyan University School of Law
Professor Pham will discuss issues involving criminal law and immigration. Her scholarship focuses on immigration law and its intersections with criminal law. In the immigration policy debate, the question of who enforces our immigration laws can be as significant as what those policies are, and Professor Pham’s most recent projects have explored the implications of changing enforcement roles for the federal government, local governments, and private parties.
Rose Cuison Villazor, Associate Professor of Law, Hofstra Law
Professor Villazor will discuss the impact of Congress' decision last year to extend the INA to the Marianas Islands, displacing what had been local immigration law. Professor Villazor's scholarship focuses on property law, immigration law, race, and citizenship. Her recent articles include Blood Quantum Land Laws: The Race versus Political Identity Dilemma in the California Law Review (2008), Rediscovering Oyama v. California: The Intersection of Property, Race and Citizenship in the Washington University Law Review (forthcoming 2010), Reading Between the (Blood) Lines: Political, Not Racial, Membership in the Southern California Law Review (forthcoming 2010), and What is a Sanctuary? in the Southern Methodist University Law Review (2008). She is the co-editor of and contributor to a forthcoming book titled Loving v. Virginia in a Post-Racial World: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Marriage being published by Cambridge University Press in 2010.
David Abraham, Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law
Professor Abraham received a B.A. in 1968, an M.A. in history in 1972, and a Ph.D. in history in 1977, all from the University of Chicago, and a J.D. in 1989 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Prior to entering law school, Professor Abraham taught for many years in the History department of Princeton University.
Following graduation from law school, he served as law clerk to Judge Leonard Garth of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and as an associate with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. He joined the Miami faculty in 1991. Professor Abraham teaches Property, Immigration & Citizenship Law, Citizenship and Identity, Law and the Transition to Capitalism and Law and Social Theory. He has been widely published in each of those areas as well as serving as a frequent media commentator for American, German, and Israeli newspapers and television.
Michael Olivas, William B. Bates Distinguished Chair of Law, University of Houston Law Center
He holds a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) from the Pontifical College Josephinum, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Ohio State University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author or co-author of twelve books, including The Dilemma of Access (Howard University Press, 1979), Latino College Students (Teachers College Press, 1986), Prepaid College Tuition Programs (College Board, 1993), and The Law and Higher Education (3rd ed., Carolina Academic Press, 2006). His most recent book, Colored Men and Hombres Aqui, was published by Arte Publico Press in 2006, while Education Law Stories was published by Foundation Press in 2007. In 2010, Harvard University Press will publish his 13th book, on the subject of undocumented immigrant children. Both the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and The Hispanic Bar Association of Houston have given him awards for lifetime achievement. Since 2002, he serves as a director on the MALDEF Board.
Cristina Rodriguez, Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Professor Rodriguez received her J.D. from Yale Law School, 2000, her M.Litt. (Modern History), Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar) in 1998, and her B.A. from Yale College in 1995. She has published extensively in the area of immigration law, with her forthcoming work The President and Immigration Law to be published in the Yale Law Journal. Professor is a non-resident fellow in the Migration Policy Institute, a position she has held since 2007.
Marisa Silenzi Cianciarulo, Associate Professor of Law, Chapman University School of Law
Professor Marisa Silenzi Cianciarulo is a specialist in clinical teaching and asylum and refugee law. She is the Director of Chapman’s Family Violence Clinic, which launched in 2007. She taught in the Villanova Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services for three year prior to joining the faculty at Chapman. She previously served as a Staff Attorney with the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration in Washington, D.C., was a partner in a law firm specializing in immigration matters, and served as interim legal director of a non-profit immigration services provider run by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia. Professor Cianciarulo received her B.A. cum laude from the Catholic University of America. She received her Juris Doctor from American University Washington College of law and her M.A. from American University School of International Service. She teaches the Family Violence Clinic, Gender & the Law, Refugee Law and Remedies.
Andrew F. Moore, Professor of Law, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law
Professor Moore started at the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM) School of Law in 1998 after earning a master’s degree in law at Columbia University School of Law. His practice experience includes representing indigent immigrants in Baltimore, Maryland and research and report writing for a human rights organization in Washington, D.C. He was a member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) from 1993 until 2002.
In 2000, Professor Moore founded the immigration law clinic at UDM with the support of the Jesuits. The Clinic allows students to provide free representation to asylum seekers appearing before the Detroit immigration court. Immigration law is one of Professor Moore’s scholarly interests as well as human rights. He has written articles on refugee issues between the U.S. and Canada and widespread fraud in the provision of legal services to immigrants.
David Thronson, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Clinical Studies, William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV
Professor Thronson earned his J.D. degree in 1994 from Harvard Law School, where he served as co-editor-in-chief of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. After clerking for Judge A. Wallace Tashima of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, Professor Thronson received a Skadden Fellowship to provide direct legal services to at-risk young people at The Door’s Legal Services Center in New York City. He subsequently served as the Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Law, litigating civil rights issues in New York and New Jersey before entering teaching. He came to the Boyd School of Law from New York University School of Law, and he also has taught at Seton Hall University School of Law and Hofstra University School of Law. Professor Thronson teaches Civil Procedure/Alternative Dispute Resolution and co-directs the Immigration Clinic.
Past Symposia
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2003
2001
2000
1999
