James C. Hathaway, J.S.D., James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law and professor of law in the Law School, retired from active faculty status on August 31, 2022.

Professor Hathaway received a LL.B. degree (with honors) in 1979 from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University and a LL.M. degree and a J.S.D. degree from Columbia University School of Law in 1982. After working at the Canadian Department of Justice for a couple of years, in 1984, he joined the faculty of the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University as an assistant professor of law. He was promoted to associate professor in 1988 and professor in 1996. Professor Hathaway joined the University of Michigan Law School faculty as a professor in 1998, and since that time has also been the director of the Law School’s Program in Refugee and Asylum Law. He also remains a senior visiting research associate at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre. From 2008 until 2010, Professor Hathaway was on leave from the Law School, serving as the dean and the William Hearn Chair of Law at the Melbourne Law School in Australia.

Professor Hathaway is a leading authority on international refugee law. His scholarship is regularly cited by the most senior courts of the common law world, and it constitutes the point of departure for much other work in this field. He is the author of 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.

The Regents now salute this distinguished teacher and scholar by naming James C. Hathaway, James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor Emeritus of Law and professor emeritus of law.