James C. Hathaway


James Hathaway is an American-Canadian scholar of international refugee law and related aspects of human rights and public international law. His work is regularly cited by the most senior courts of the common law world, and has played a pivotal role in the evolution of refugee studies scholarship. Hathaway pioneered the understanding of refugee status as surrogate or substitute protection of human rights, authored the world's first comprehensive analysis of the human rights of refugees, merging doctrinal study of refugee and human rights law with empirical analysis of the state of refugee protection around the world and directed a multidisciplinary and global team of scholars and officials in an initiative to reconceive the structures of refugee protection more fairly to share burdens and responsibilities.

Education

Hathaway earned an LL.B. at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, and a J.S.D. and LL.M. at Columbia University. He was called to the bars of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and New Brunswick. He presently resides in San Francisco, Tucson, and Vancouver.

Career

Since 1998, Hathaway has been the James E. and Sarah A Degan Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School where he is also the founding Director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law. In addition he presently serves as Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Refugee Law at the University of Amsterdam, Founding Patron and Senior Advisor of the non-governmental group Asylum Access and Emeritus Counsel on International Protection to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.
He has been appointed a visiting professor at the American University in Cairo, and at the Universities of California, Macerata, San Francisco, Stanford, Tokyo, and Toronto.
Prior to joining the Michigan faculty, Hathaway served as founding faculty member of the Ecole de droit de l'Universite de Moncton, the world's first French-language common law program of study, and Professor of Law and Associate Dean of York University's Osgoode Hall Law School.
From 2008 until 2010, Hathaway was on leave from Michigan Law School as the Dean and William Hearn Chair of Law at the Melbourne Law School in Australia. At Melbourne he led the Law School's transition to become Australia's first, all-graduate program. Hathaway's main focus was to establish Melbourne as Australia's leading law school, including by joining leading law schools from around the world in establishing the London-based Centre for Transnational Legal Studies, and launching joint degree programs linking Melbourne with leading law schools on three continents, including the Chinese University of Hong Kong, New York University and Oxford University.

Scholarship

Hathaway's scholarly work focuses on international human rights and refugees.
Among his publications are a treatise on the refugee definition, The Law of Refugee Status: 2nd Edition ; an interdisciplinary study of refugee law reform, Reconceiving International Refugee Law ; and an analysis of the nature of the legal duty to protect refugees, The Rights of Refugees under International Law.

Awards