Professor Amelia Wilson is a Clinical Professor in the Immigrants’ Rights/International
Human Rights Clinic. Prior to joining Seton Hall School of Law, Professor Wilson served
for four years as Supervising Attorney, Research Scholar and Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia
Law School where she co-instructed the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic.
Professor Wilson has been practicing in the area of immigration law since 2005, and
has represented hundreds of individuals as they navigate our detention and deportation
system. While acting as the Senior Detention Attorney at the American Friends Service
Committee from 2010 – 2016, Professor Wilson was instrumental in scaffolding and then
leading the first public-defender style program for detained noncitizens in removal
proceedings in New Jersey. She specializes in representing noncitizens with mental
health disabilities, and her research and scholarship focus on safeguarding the due
process rights of this particularly vulnerable population.
In addition to teaching, writing, and engaging in direct legal services, Amelia helped
the Department of Justice build the first (and to date, only) government-funded appointed
counsel system for any immigrant group.
Professor Wilson is a graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School (J.D., 2004),
and is licensed in New York.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
LAW REVIEW ARTICLES
What’s the Matter with Franco,
UC Davis Law Review, Vol. 57, No. 2,
(forthcoming Dec. 2023)
Force Multiplier: An Intersectional Examination of One Immigrant Woman’s Journey Through
Multiple Systems Of Oppression,
38 Berkeley J. Gender L. & Just.
(forthcoming Spring 2023)
Franco I Loved: Reconciling the Two Halves of the Nation’s Only Government-Funded
Public Defender Program for Immigrants,
97 Wash. L. Rev. online 21
(2022)
Accessing Justice: a Call for Reparations for the Survivors of Medical Abuse at the
Irwin County Detention Center,
37 Md. J. Int'l L.
(2022)
Addressing All Heads of the Hydra: Reframing Safeguards for Mentally Impaired Detainees
in Immigration Removal Proceedings,
39 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 313
(2015)
Applying Method to the Madness: The Right to Court Appointed Guardians Ad Litem and
Counsel for the Mentally Ill in Immigration Proceedings,
16 U. Pa. J.L. & Soc. Change 1
(2013)
(with Natalie Prokop)
Piercing the Confidentiality Veil: Physician Testimony in International Criminal Trials
Against Perpetrators of Torture,
15 Minn. J. Intl. L. 43
(2006)
(with David Weissbrodt, Ferhat Pekin)
OTHER JOURNAL ARTICLES
Universal Representation Initiatives Gain Ground, Marking A Win for Detained Indigent
Respondents,
62 Fed. Law. 16
(2015)
Vanishing Visibility: How Particular Social Group Requirements Have Changed in the
Third Circuit’s Asylum Cases,
59 Fed. Law. 48
(2012)
(with the Hon. Dorothy A. Harbeck, Rana Kashlan, and the Hon. Amiena A. Khan)
