James C. Hathaway (1956- ) is an eminent Canadian/American legal scholar in the field of international refugee law. He earned his J.S.D. and LL.M. at Columbia University, and an LL.B. (Honors) at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. He has an honorary doctorate from Université de Louvain, Belgium.
Hathaway's scholarly work focuses on on international human rights and refugees and is regularly cited by the most senior courts of the common law world.
Professor Hathaway is the James E. and Sarah A Degan Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School (USA), as well as Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Refugee Law at the University of Amsterdam, and Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Law School (Australia) [1]. He is President of the Cuenca Colloquium on International Refugee Law (Spain) and Senior Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University's Refugee Studies Centre (UK). Hathaway is also Founding Patron and Honorary Director of the non-governmental group Asylum Access and serves as Emeritus Counsel on International Protection to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Professor Hathaway established and directs the Refugee Caselaw Site (http://www.refugeecaselaw.org), and is an editor of the Journal of Refugee Studies and the Immigration and Nationality Law Reports. He was called to the bars of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and New Brunswick.
Before joining the Michigan faculty in 1998, Hathaway held appointments as Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Toronto's Osgoode Hall Law School (1984–1998), as Special Consultant on Legal Assistance for the Disadvantaged to the Canadian Department of Justice (1983–1984), and as part of the founding faculty of the Ecole de droit de l'Universite de Moncton (Canada) (1981–1984), the world's first French-language common law program of study.
From 2008 until 2010, Professor Hathaway was on leave from Michigan Law School to serve as the Dean and William Hearn Chair of Law at the Melbourne Law School [2]. Upon his departure, Melbourne University Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis wrote, "with Jim Hathaway's departure from the position of law dean, the University of Melbourne loses one of its most creative academic leaders. Professor Hathaway joined us at the start of 2008 to lead the most ambitious change in the history of Australian legal education - the establishment of this country's first all-graduate law program, flagship of the University's 'Melbourne Model' transition. Drawing on extensive experience as a faculty member and administrator at leading law schools in Canada and the United States, he led a seamless and wholly successful transition to the graduate education model. The Melbourne JD is now widely regarded as Australia's premier legal credential, attracting extraordinarily gifted students from across the country and around the world." Professor Hathaway had previously voiced concerns that the traditional "Dean-as-scholar" model is not viable (Hathaway 2009), especially without the support of a high-level professional administrative team of the kind common in leading North American law schools 1. Among his signal achievements at Melbourne was the establishment of joint degree programs linking Melbourne with leading law schools on three continents, including the Chinese University of Hong Kong (JD/LLM), New York University (JD/JD and JD/LLM) and Oxford University (JD/BCL).
Among his more important publications are a treatise on the refugee definition, The Law of Refugee Status (1991); an interdisciplinary study of refugee law reform, Reconceiving International Refugee Law (1997); and an analysis of the nature of the legal duty to protect refugees, The Rights of Refugees under International Law (2005).
References
Hathaway, J. 2010. Leveraging Asylum Texas International Law Journal 45(3): 503-45.
Hathaway, J. 2009. Pourquoi protéger de l'«arbitraire»? Annales de Droit de Louvain 69(2): 218-24. (Presented as part of Doctorats honoris causa de la Faculté. La protection contre l'arbitraire.)
Hathaway, J. 2009. The Dean As Drudge. International Association of Law Schools conference, Canberra, July.
Hathaway, J. 2008. The human rights quagmire of "human trafficking"' Virginia Journal of International Law 49: 1-59.
Hathaway, J. 2007. 'Forced Michigan Studies: Could we Agree Just to 'Date'?' Journal of Refugee Studies 20: 349-369; 385-390.
Hathaway, J. 2007. 'Refugee Solutions or Solutions to Refugeehood?' Refuge 24: 3-10.
Hathaway, J. 2007. 'Why Refugee Law Still Matters' The Melbourne Journal of International Law 8: 89-103.
Hathaway, J. 2006. 'The False Panacea of Offshore Deterrence' Forced Migration Review 26: 56-57.
Hathaway J. and W. Hicks, 2004. 'Is there a 'subjective element' in the refugee convention's requirement of 'well-founded fear' Michigan Journal of International Law 26: 505-562.
Hathaway, J. 2003. 'A Forum for the Transnational Development of Refugee Law: The IARJ's Advanced Refugee Law Workshop' International Journal of Refugee Law 15: 418-421.
R. Haines, J. Hathaway and M. Foster, 2003. 'Claims to Refugee Status Based on Voluntary but Protected Actions' International Journal of Refugee Law 15: 430-443.
Hathaway J. and M. Foster, 2003. 'Membership of a Particular Social Group ' International Journal of Refugee Law 15: 477-491.
Hathaway J. and M. Foster, 2003. 'The Causal Connection ("Nexus") to a Convention Ground' International Journal of Refugee Law 15: 461-476.
P. Mathew, J. Hathaway and M. Foster, 2003. 'The Role of State Protection in Refugee Analysis' International Journal of Refugee Law 15: 444-460.
Hathaway J. 2003. 'What's in a Label?' European Journal of Migration and Law 5: 1-21.
Hathaway J. 2002. 'Who Should Watch over Refugee Law?' Forced Migration Review 14: 23-26.
Hathaway J. and C. Harvey, 2001. 'Framing Refugee Protection in the New World Disorder' Cornell International Law Journal 34 257-320.