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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.
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