Overview
Professional Biography
For those who care about titles, I am a Professor of Law and Government at Cornell University. Like most people, however, I have diverse interests that are not well captured by the content of my business card. Mostly, I am a student and litigator. Sometimes, I am a student of the American criminal justice system, and write about its cruelty and inequity. Other times, I am a student of neighborhood well-being, and ask what it takes to create and sustain healthy, vibrant and safe neighborhoods. And on other occasions, I am a civil rights attorney and critic of the national security state. For many years, I have defended people caught up in the excesses of the so-called war on terror.
Wearing my academic hat, I have written a slew of articles and two books: What Changed When Everything Changed: 9/11 and the Making of National Identity (Yale 2013), and Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (Simon & Schuster 2006). Guantánamo won a bunch of awards, which was very nice. I am working on two other books, including one on the politics of forgiveness, which asks who and what is forgiven in American life, and what the fault lines reveal about us, and another on neighborhood well-being, which asks whether a distressed community can save itself without setting the seeds for its own destruction.
Wearing my civil rights hat, I was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush (2004), involving detentions at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, and in Geren v. Omar & Munaf v. Geren (2008), involving detentions at Camp Cropper in Iraq. Presently I represent Abu Zubaydah, who was held in CIA black sites and whose interrogation in 2002 and 2003 prompted the Bush Administration to draft the infamous "torture memos."
Education
B.A., Cornell University, 1982
J.D., Northwestern University Law School, 1988
In the news
- Sean Grayson due in court, attorney and legal scholar comments
- Reforming police culture across nation a ‘shared responsibility’
- When Will Texas Stop Executing People Whose Death Sentences Are Unconstitutional?
- How to transform neighborhoods without destroying them
- Cornell, Ithaca College effort moves housing project forward
- Margulies receives Levy faculty engagement award
- A&S students win prestigious Truman, Goldwater scholarships
- Chauvin verdict first step in police reform, finding alternatives to policing
- ‘The devil is in the details’ for NYC solitary confinement ban
- Cornell undergrads aid in prisoner’s release after 28 years
- Grants fund community-engaged learning curricula
- Charging officers in Breonna Taylor’s killing won’t fix ‘deeply flawed’ system
- Policing, incarceration examined in racism webinar debut
- Vigilantes claim to preserve law and order. Their true goal is to save Whiteness.
- A&S launches ‘Racism in America’ webinar series Sept. 16
- Policing one of many abuses inflicted by the criminal justice system
- Professors to teach new fall course on impeachment
- ‘Making the turn’: from inmate to scholar
- Grants create engagement opportunities for students
- In answering Ardern’s global anti-racism call, don’t let state actors slide
- How a conservative Supreme Court could actually benefit progressives
- The Innocence of Abu Zubaydah
- Govt. professor has questions for new CIA director
- 2017 Merrill scholars honor their teachers and mentors
- Students explore criminal justice through new minor
- New federal prison release is a step forward, but not a game-changer
GOVT Courses - Fall 2024
- GOVT 2011 : September 11 and the Politics of Memory
- GOVT 3121 : Crime and Punishment
- GOVT 4999 : Undergraduate Independent Study