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

Professor Schrag teaches Professional Responsibility and directs the Center for Applied Legal Studies, in which students represent refugees from persecution who are seeking asylum in the United States. He served for 21 years as the Director of the Public Interest Law Scholars Program, through which selected law students who plan careers as public interest lawyers receive scholarship grants and special academic enrichment and guidance in that field. 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, 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 seventeen books, including Reflections on Clinical Legal Education (with Michael Meltsner, 1998), Asylum Denied: A Refugee’s Struggle for Safety in America (with David Ngaruri Kenney, 2008); Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication and Proposals for Reform (with Jaya Ramji-Nogales and Andrew I. Schoenholtz, 2009); Lives in the Balance: Asylum Adjudication by the Department of Homeland Security (with Jaya Ramji-Nogales and Andew I. Schoenholtz, 2014); and Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America (2020).

Andrew I. Schoenholtz
Director, Center for Applied Legal Studies; Director, Human Rights Institute; Professor from Practice, Georgetown Law; B.A., Hamilton; J.D., Harvard; Ph.D., Brown

Professor Schoenholtz directs the Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies as well as the Center for Applied Legal Studies at the Law Center, and is the Deputy Director of Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration.  He teaches courses on Refugee Law and Policy, Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies, and Immigration Law and Policy.  Prior to teaching at the Law Center, Professor Schoenholtz served as Deputy Director of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform and practiced immigration, asylum and international law with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling.  Dr. Schoenholtz has conducted fact-finding missions in Haiti, Cuba, Ecuador, Germany, Croatia, Bosnia, Malawi, and Zambia to study root causes of forced migration, refugee protection, long-term solutions to mass migration emergencies, and humanitarian relief operations.  He researches and writes regularly on refugee law and policy.  His publications include: Refugee Roulette:  Disparities in Asylum Adjudication (co-author); Refugee Protection in the United States Post-September 11th; The Uprooted:  Improving Humanitarian Responses to Forced Migration (chapter on “Improving Legal Frameworks”); and Aiding and Abetting Persecutors: The Seizure and Return of Haitian Refugees in Violation of the U.N. Refugee Convention and Protocol.   Dr. Schoenholtz holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. from Brown University.

Iman Saad

B.A., The College of New Jersey; J.D., Seton Hall University School of Law

Before joining the CALS team, Iman was the Practitioner in Residence for the Immigrants’ Rights and International Human Rights Clinic at the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, New Jersey. Iman led a newly launched detention project as part of a state-funded Detention and Deportation Defense Initiative, which provides pro bono legal services to New Jersey immigrants facing deportation. As part of this program, Iman represented numerous individuals in their removal proceedings in a variety of immigration matters, including asylum, withholding of removal, relief under the Convention Against Torture, cancellation of removal applications, bond motions, motions to reopen, motions to terminate, and appeals before the Board of Immigration Appeals. Iman also mentored, trained and supervised law students, pro bono volunteers, fellows, and staff attorneys in removal defense.

Prior to joining the Center for Social Justice, Iman was selected for the Department of Justice Honors Program to serve as a Judicial Law Clerk and later, an Attorney Advisor with the Newark Immigration Court. Iman received her J.D. from Seton Hall Law School, where she graduated cum laude and was a Center for Social Justice Scholar. During law school, Iman served as a legal intern with American Friends Service Committee in Newark, New Jersey, assisting attorneys in representing immigrants before the Newark and Elizabeth Immigration Courts, and as an Executive Office intern with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Beirut, Lebanon. Iman received her B.A. in Political Science and Journalism from the College of New Jersey. Iman speaks Arabic.

Lauren Hughes

B.A., DePaul University; J.D./LL.M., Duke University School of Law

Before joining CALS, Lauren served as Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow at the community-based non-profit Building One Community in Stamford, Connecticut. As part of a newly created removal defense practice, Lauren represented clients from a range of countries on their removal cases, asylum applications, Violence Against Women Act self-petitions, Cuban Adjustment Act petitions, and other humanitarian based claims. Lauren also helped develop community workshops and resources to assist individuals who recently arrived to the United States from the southern border. Lauren was previously a Law Clerk to Judge Gary S. Katzmann at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, New York. She worked on trade cases involving antidumping duties, countervailable subsidies, customs classifications, import embargoes, and a variety of administrative law issues. She also prepared cases for sittings by designation with the First, Second, and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals. While obtaining a joint J.D./LL.M. in international and comparative law at Duke Law, Lauren helped found the Duke Immigrant and Refugee Project and participated in the International Human Rights Clinic researching issues of enforced disappearance, countering violent extremism policies, the right to repatriation, and deprivation of citizenship. Lauren also served as a Submissions Editor to the American Journal of International Law. Lauren continues to be involved in the American Society of International Law by serving on the Steering Committee of the Women in International Law Interest Group. Prior to law school, Lauren taught English in Arica, Chile, as part of the U.N. Development Program-sponsored English Opens Doors Program. Lauren received her B.A. in Political Science from DePaul University. Lauren speaks Spanish.