Deborah M. Weissman

Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law

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 numerous 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

Gender Violence, The Carceral State, and The Politics of Solidarity, 55 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 801 (2021).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein

The Final Act - Deportation by ICE Air (with H. Clark and A. Snodgrass Godoy), 49 HOFSTRA L. REV. 437 (2021).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein

The Role of the Mexican Consulate Network in Assisting Migrant Labor Claims Across the U.S.-Mexico Migratory System (with R. Martinez-Schuldt and J. Hagan), 46 Lab. Stud. J. 345 (2021).
Hein | Document Link

In Pursuit of Economic Justice: The Political Economy of Domestic Violence Laws and Policies, 2020 UTAH L. REV. 1 (2020).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

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

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

Law, Social Movements, and the Political Economy of Domestic Violence, 20 DUKE J. GENDER L. & POL'Y 221 (2013).
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).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

SSRN Author Page

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