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Karen Musalo

Professor and Chair in International Law, Director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies

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Bio

Karen Musalo is the Bank of America Foundation Chair in International Law at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. She is the founding director of both the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, which is internationally recognized for its research, legal advocacy, and expert consultation to attorneys worldwide.

Professor Musalo is the lead co-author of Refugee Law and Policy: An International and Comparative Approach (6th ed.). She has written extensively on refugee law and has shaped the evolving jurisprudence of asylum not only through her scholarship, but also through her litigation. For more than three decades, beginning with Matter of Kasinga, establishing female genital cutting as a basis for asylum, she has played a central role in every major landmark case involving gender-based violence and the right to refugee protection. Professor Musalo has also been influential in developing the legal analysis of claims grounded in freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, with particular focus on conscientious objection as a basis for protection.

She is widely recognized for her innovative work on refugee representation. She was the first attorney to collaborate with psychologists in advocating for traumatized asylum seekers, and she edited the earliest practitioner’s handbook on cross-cultural issues and the impact of culture on credibility in the asylum process. A frequent media commentator, she is also the author of numerous opinion pieces.

Professor Musalo has received multiple national awards in recognition of her advocacy on behalf of refugees. These include the 2010 California Lawyer of the Year Award, the Daily Journal’s 2009 recognition as one of California’s “Top 100” lawyers, and the 2015 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year Award. In 2012, she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Lehman College, the same year she received UC Law SF’s Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is a frequent speaker at conferences across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Latin America.

 

 

 

 

 

Education

  • Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley
    J.D., Law     1981

  • Brooklyn College. City University of New York
    B.A., Comparative Literature     1973

Accomplishments

  • Lawyer of the Year Award
    Awarded by the Immigration Law Section of the Federal Bar Association.     2015

  • Chair in International Law
    Conferred by the Bank of America Foundation.     2014

  • Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters
    Awarded by Lehman College at the City University of New York.     2012

  • Rutter Award
    Awarded by for excellence in teaching.     2012

  • California Lawyer of the Year (CLAY) Award
    Awarded by the monthly legal magazine, California Lawyer.     2010

  • Top 100 Attorneys in California Award
    Awarded by Daily Journal.     2009

  • Human Rights Award
    Awarded by the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant.     2004

  • Carol King Award
    Awarded by the National Immigration Project.     2003

  • Human Rights Award
    Awarded by the American Immigration Lawyers Association.     2002

  • Annual Award
    Awarded by the New York Central American Refugee Center.     1998

  • Outstanding Achievement Award
    Awarded by the Political Asylum Immigration Representation Project.     1998

  • Eighth Annual Phillip Burton Immigration and Civil Rights Award
    Awarded by The Immigrant Legal Resource Center.     1997

  • Recognition: The American Lawyer
    Conferred in recognition of the publication " The Public Sector: forty-five young lawyers outside the private sector whose vision andcommitment are changing lives."     1997

Selected Scholarship

Links

Courses

  • Refugee Law & Policy
  • Refugee and Human Rights Clinic

Expertise

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