Matthew Boaz, JD
Assistant Professor of Law
Professor Matthew Boaz joins the College of Law where he will teach Torts, Immigration Law, and a seminar on the intersection of criminal law and immigration law. Prof. Boaz was previously the Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Washington & Lee University School of Law where he was a professor of practice.
Boaz's scholarship is concerned with the intersection of criminal law and immigration law, critical theory, abolition, and issues related to immigration proceedings, including detention and universal representation. His work is forthcoming in the North Carolina Law Review and has been published in the Tennessee Law Review and the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal. He has also authored shorter pieces for the University of Oxford Border Criminologies Blog.
Prior to teaching, Prof. Boaz was a Senior Detention Attorney with the Immigrant Rights Project of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Newark, NJ, where he represented individuals held in immigration detention centers while in removal proceedings . He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., with a certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies) and Texas Christian University (B.A. in Political Science with an emphasis in International Relations, summa cum laude). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Specialties
- Torts
- Immigration Law
- Criminal Law
- Practical Abolition: Universal Representation as an Alternative to Immigration Detention, Tennessee Law Review, Vol. 89, Issue 199 (2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3801782.
- The Migration of Abolition Theory, North Carolina Law Review, Vol. 103, No. _, 2025, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4514118
Speculative Immigration Policy, Georgetown Immigration Law Review, Vol. 37, No. 183, 2023, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4203766
Links
- SSRN
- matthew-boaz-cv-2024_8_7.pdf (154.79 KB)