James C. Hathaway is the James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He works in the field of public international law, with a focus on international human rights law, international queer rights, and international refugee law. Before his retirement from the teaching faculty in 2022, Hathaway served as the founding director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan from 1998 to 2022.

From 2008 until 2010, Hathaway was on leave from the University of Michigan to serve as the dean of law and William Hearn Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, where he established Australia’s first all-graduate legal education program. He previously held positions as professor of law and associate dean of the Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto from1984 to 1998, counsel on special legal assistance for the disadvantaged to the Government of Canada from 1983 to 1984, and professeur adjoint de droit at the Université de Moncton, Canada, from 1980 to 1983. He has been appointed a visiting professor or scholar at the American University in Cairo, the University of California, the University of Macerata, the University of San Francisco, Stanford University, the University of Tokyo, the University of Toronto, and Torcuato di Tella University. He was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Refugee Law at the University of Amsterdam from 2010 to 2022.

Hathaway’s publications include more than 100 journal articles, book chapters, and studies; a leading treatise on the refugee definition (The Law of Refugee Status, second edition 2014 with M. Foster; first edition 1991, republished in Russian in 2007 and Japanese in 2008); and an interdisciplinary study of models for refugee law reform (Reconceiving International Refugee Law, 1997). He is the author of The Rights of Refugees under International Law (Cambridge University Press, second edition 2021; first edition republished in Japanese in 2014 and Chinese in 2017), the first comprehensive analysis of the human rights of refugees set by the UN Refugee Convention and the International Bill of Rights. He is the founding editor of Cambridge Asylum and Migration Studies.

Hathaway regularly advises and provides training to academic, nongovernmental, and official audiences around the world. He holds doctoral degrees honoris causa from the Université catholique de Louvain (2009) and the University of Amsterdam (2017). Hathaway was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2023.

Related Information

Areas of Interest

Education
  • Osgoode Hall Law School, LLB, with honors
  • Columbia University, LLM, JSD

    • Recent Courses

    Featured Scholarship

    The Rights of Refugees Under International Law

    MLaw Repository
    • International and Comparative Law
    • Human Rights

    The Law of Refugee Status

    • Human Rights

    "Claiming Queer Liberty"

    Berkeley Journal of International Law

    WWW HEIN
    • International and Comparative Law
    • Human Rights

    "The De-Legalization of Global Refugee Protection"

    Migration and Asylum Policies Systems’ National and Supranational Regimes: The General Framework and the Way Forward

    WWW
    • International and Comparative Law
    • Human Rights
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    Activities
    February 2025

    Presented “The Absolute Prohibition of Refoulement and Exceptional Circumstances,” at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights Launch Event, Oxford University, Oxford, United Kingdom.

    November 2024

    Presented “Claiming Queer Liberty,” the Annual Hon. Michael Kirby Lecture in International Law at Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

    October 2024

    Presented “The Core Paradox of International Refugee Law,” at International Law Association’s International Law Weekend, New York, NY.

    October 2023

    Presented “Responding to Climate-Induced Forced Migration,” at the World Refugee and Migration Council, Ottawa, Canada.

    June 2023

    Presented “The Quagmire of Vulnerability in Asylum Law,” the keynote address at the ULNER Final Conference,  Brussels, Belgium.

    September 2019
    Delivered the training program on a new unified screening mechanism for refugees and others in need of protection, Law Society of Hong Kong.
    September 2019
    Presented “Genocidal Intent: Responding to the Rohingya Refugee Crisis” at the New York City Bar Association and led a roundtable discussion on creative answers to current protection challenges at the UNHCR Mission to the United Nations.
    May 2019
    Presented “The Global Cop-Out on Refugees: Why the World Needs a Bold Plan to Save Refugee Protection” at the Center for Human Rights, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.
    April 2019
    Participated in “Refugee Law Challenges: A Conversation with Professor James Hathaway,” University of Cape Town, South Africa.
    April 2019
    Presented “The False Panacea of ‘Thin Protection’: Why We Need a Bold Plan to Save Refugee Protection” at the National University of Singapore.
    April 2019
    Led a discussion on “The Architecture of International Refugee Law” at the National Chengchi University School of Law, Taipei, Taiwan.
    April 2019
    Delivered the keynote address on “In Search of Asylum: An Interdisciplinary Discussion” at the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts Weissbourd Conference, University of Chicago.
    March 2019
    Delivered the keynote address on “Reconciling Refugee Law and Private International Law” at the Conference on Families Across Borders, Ghent University Faculty of Law, Ghent, Belgium.
    February 2019
    Delivered the keynote address on the “Continued Relevance of the 1951 Refugee Convention” at the Emory International Law Review Symposium, Atlanta.
    November 2018
    Participated in a panel discussion on “Detaining Refugee Children: What’s at Stake?”, Donia Human Rights Center, University of Michigan.
    September 2018
    Presented “The False Panacea of ‘Thin’ Protection: Why We Need a Bold Plan to Save Refugee Protection” at the University of Manitoba School of Law’s Distinguished Visitors Lecture Series, Winnipeg.
    August 2018
    Gave the keynote address at the biennial meeting of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, Thessaloniki, Greece.
    May 2018
    Was a visiting professor and taught an intensive course on the Convention refugee definition and delivered a public lecture on the need for a global system of refugee burden and responsibility sharing, University of Ljubljana Faculty of Law, Slovenia.
    May 2018
    Presented “Is There a Duty on Refugees to Avoid Risk?” to judges of the Federal Court of Australia, Melbourne.
    May 2018
    Led a national simulcast conversation on refugee protection among members of the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Sydney.
    May 2018
    Met with refugees encamped in Nauru by Australia, advised the government on reform of its refugee laws, and trained the judges of both the refugee tribunal and Supreme Court, Nauru.

    News and Events

    Portrait of James Hathaway
    News

    Hathaway Elected as Fellow of Royal Society of Canada

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