Deborah M. Weissman

Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law

Email
weissman@email.unc.edu
Work
(919) 962-5108
Office
5078 Van Hecke-Wettach Hall
Social
@DeborahWeissman
Curriculum Vitae Download Photo

Areas of Expertise

  • Access to Justice
  • Asylum and Refugee Law
  • Civil Rights and Discrimination
  • Criminal Justice Politics
  • Critical Legal Theory
  • Domestic and Sexual Violence
  • Family Law
  • Feminist Legal Theory
  • Gender and the Law
  • Gender Violence
  • Human Rights Law
  • Immigration Law
  • International Human Rights
  • Law and Society
  • Political Economy and the Law
  • Public Interest Law
  • Public Law and Legal Theory
  • Social Welfare Law

Biography

Deborah M. Weissman joined the Carolina Law Faculty in 1998 and is the Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law. She was the Director of Clinical Programs from January 2001 through July 2010. Her teaching and research interests include law and political economy, migration/immigration, human rights, critical legal theories, and gender violence. Weissman is the author of numbers articles, essays, and book chapters on the political economy of gender violence, language rights, immigration-related issues, and human rights. Her work has appeared in the Boston College Law Review, the William & Mary Law Review, Columbia Human Rights Journal, among others. She received the ACLU’s Frank Porter Graham Award for Outstanding Civil Rights Work.

Weissman is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Syracuse University and graduated cum laude from Syracuse University Law School. After law school, she had extensive experience in all phases of legal advocacy for persons unable to access counsel in the private market. Her practice included labor law, family and education related civil rights, and immigration law in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Tampa, Florida, and as a partner in a civil rights firm in Syracuse, New York. From 1994 to 1998, she was Deputy Director and then Executive Director at Legal Services of North Carolina.

Education

  • J.D. (cum laude), Syracuse University (1975)
  • B.A. (magna cum laude), Syracuse University (1972)

Selected Publications

The Community Politics of Domestic Violence, 82 BROOK. L. REV.  1479 (2017).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

Countering Neoliberalism and Aligning Solidarities: Rethinking Domestic Violence Advocacy, 45 SW. L. REV. 915 (2016).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein

The Politics of Narrative: Law and the Representation of Mexican Criminality, 38 FORDHAM INT'L L.J. 141 (2015).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

Remaking Mexico: Law Reform as Public Policy, 35 CARDOZO L. REV. 1471 (2014).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

Redefining Human Rights Lawyering Through the Lens Of Critical Theory: Lessons for Pedagogy and Practice (with C. Bettinger-Lopez, D. Finger, M. Jain, J. Newman and S. Paoletti), 18 GEO. J. ON POVERTY L. & POL'Y 337 (2011).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

The Moral Politics of Social Control: Political Culture and Ordinary Crime in Cuba (with M. Weissman), 35 BROOK. J. INT'L L. 311 (2010).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

Public Power and Private Purpose: Odious Debt and the Political Economy of Hegemony, (with L. Perez) 32 N.C. J. INT'L L. & COM. REG. 699 (2007).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

The Personal is Political--and Economic: Rethinking Domestic Violence, 2007 B.Y.U. L. REV. 387 (2007).
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The Political Economy of Violence: Toward an Understanding of the Gender-Based Murders of Ciudad Juárez, 30 N.C. J. INT'L L. & COM. REG. 795 (2005).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

The Human Rights Dilemma: Rethinking the Humanitarian Project, 35 COLUM. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 259 (2004).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

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