Professor Jeffries received his B.A. in History from Duke University and his J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, Paul Robeson Scholar, Jane Marks Murphy Prize recipient, Mitsubishi International Fellow, and Managing Editor of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. After law school, Professor Jeffries clerked for the Honorable Nathaniel R. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Professor Jeffries subsequently worked as an associate with the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now Wilmer Hale), where, among other matters, he defended the University of Michigan in the Grutter and Gratz cases in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the right of universities to use race-conscious admissions policies.

Upon leaving Wilmer Cutler, Professor Jeffries joined the law firm of Gibbons, P.C, as a John J. Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Litigation. As a Gibbons Fellow, Professor Jeffries engaged in a wide-range of public-interest advocacy, including the representation of newspapers seeking access to closed, post-9/11 immigration hearings; criminal-defense and public-interest lawyers in state and federal Supreme Court criminal-procedure matters; and the NAACP in challenging New Jersey’s legislative redistricting plan. Professor Jeffries was named Deputy Director of the Gibbons Fellowship in 2003. Professor Jeffries, who remains Of Counsel to Gibbons, joined the Law School faculty in summer 2004.

At Seton Hall, Professor Jeffries teaches Criminal Law, as well as a Civil Litigation Clinic in the Law School’s Center for Social Justice. Professor Jeffries’s clinic represents clients pro bono on a diversity of issues, with a focus on education matters designed to empower urban parents with greater agency over their children’s education. These cases include the representation of several thousand Newark children seeking mandated special-education services, 30,000 Newark children seeking to enforce the free-tutoring and transfer entitlements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and several thousand children challenging state discrimination in the funding available to public charter schools. In recognition of his public-interest advocacy, Professor Jeffries has received numerous awards and honors, including recognition in 2006 and 2007 by Superlawyers Magazine as one of New Jersey’s top lawyers under the age of 40.

Professor Jeffries’s scholarship also focuses on education reform. He has presented on numerous panels on education reform and often appears on radio, television, and in print media to discuss education and urban-justice issues. In addition to his more formal publications, he is a Regular Contributor and Co-Administrator of Blackprof.com, a widely read weblog devoted to issues of race, culture, and society, and which features commentary from many of the nation’s leading academics.