Delaney Family Professor of Public Interest Law; Director, Center for Applied Legal Studies
A.B., Harvard; LL.B., Yale

Assistant: Nicky McMillan

Phone: 202-662-9099

Biography

Professor Schrag teaches Civil Procedure and directs the Center for Applied Legal Studies, in which students represent refugees from persecution who are seeking asylum in the United States. Before joining the Law Center faculty in 1981, he was assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Educational Fund, Consumer Advocate of the City of New York, a professor at Columbia University Law School, and Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, from which he received a Meritorious Honor Award in 1981. Professor Schrag has also had a distinguished and varied career in civic service, which has included positions as a delegate to the District of Columbia Statehood Constitutional Convention in 1982, an editor and consultant on consumer protection during the Carter-Mondale transition, a consultant to the New York State Consumer Protection Board, a consultant to the Governor's Advisory Council of Puerto Rico, an advisor to the Committee of Chinese Legal Educators, and an Academic Specialist for the United States Information Agency in the Czech Republic and Hungary. In addition, he drafted New York City's Consumer Protection Act of 1969. He is also a prolific author, having written dozens of articles on consumer law, nuclear arms control, political asylum, and various other topics for both law journals and popular publications. He is the author, or co-author, of fourteen books, including Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication and Proposals for Reform (with Jaya Ramji-Nogales and Andrew I. Schoenholtz) (N.Y.U. Press 2009), Asylum Denied (with David Ngarurih Kenney) (Univ of California Press 2008) and the innovative professional responsibility textbook   Ethical Problems in the Practice of Law (with Professor Lisa G. Lerman) (Aspen Publishers, 2d ed. 2008). He has been honored with the Association of American Law Schools' Deborah L. Rhode award for advancing public service opportunities in law schools through scholarship, service and leadership, Lexis/Nexis' Daniel Levy Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in Immigration Law, and the Outstanding Law School Faculty Award of Equal Justice Works, for leadership in nurturing a spirit of public service in legal education and beyond.