teach immigration law, as he did while a turing company, and Cox entered Princeton visiting professor in Fall 2008. He comes University on the techie track, graduating from the University of Chicago Law School, summa cum laude in 1996 with a degree where he began his academic career in 2002 in mechanical and aerospace engineering. as a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and was most (Miles adds that Cox is still mechanically recently professor of law. University of Chi- adept, having fixed his iPhone recently.) cago colleague Eric Posner, who has co-au- Cox won a full-tuition merit scholarship thored several articles with Cox, including to the University of Michigan Law School, “The Rights of Migrants: An Optimal Con- eventually graduating first in his class. After his clerkship in Los Angeles, Cox tract Framework” (New York University Law Review, 2009), adds: “Professor Cox moved to New York City, where he spent brings to bear a wide range of interdisci- a year as Karpatkin Civil Rights Fellow at plinary approaches, such as economics the American Civil Liberties Union Founand political science, which enable him to dation. Before beginning his academic caadvance the literature in immigration law reer, he worked for a year as an associate significantly.” For example, by applying at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, where he economic models, the authors concluded litigated civil rights and immigration cases. He and his wife, Courtney Oliva, who that rather than being a problem due to insufficient enforcement resources, illegal until recently was an associate at Winston immigration is a policy choice that allows & Strawn in Chicago and will work at NYU the United States to obtain cheap labor Law’s Center on the Administration of while retaining the power to deport those Criminal Law, are eager to move to the West who burden the justice or welfare systems Village. Cox is looking forward to listening and grant amnesty to those who become to indie bands at the Bowery Ballroom and small Brooklyn clubs, and checking out the productive members of society. Cox has also made significant contri- foodie scene on the Lower East Side and in butions to the literature of voting rights Brooklyn. — Denise Topolnicki and election law. In “Judging the Voting Rights Act” (Columbia Law Review, 2008), he and co-author Thomas Miles, an economist and law professor at the University assistant professor of of Chicago Law School, provided the first clinical law empirical evidence that race as well as As students in the Immigrant political ideology can influence judicial Rights Clinic, Alina Das and decisions. Their analysis of how judges her friends would joke about voted on lawsuits brought under the Vot- making those years last foring Rights Act of 1965 also revealed that ever, perhaps by forming a the political affiliation and race of the law firm to fight for immicolleagues that judges sat with on panels grants’ rights. “Of course, affected their decisions. we all knew that we’d go Cox and Miles had clerked for judges our separate ways, but on opposite ends of the political spectrum we fantasized about on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth what an ideal job it Circuit. Cox worked for Judge Stephen would be,” she says. Reinhardt, who is so renowned as an activReturning to the IRC ist that The Onion once satirically reported first as a teaching fellow in that he had declared the private celebration 2008, then joining the faculty of Christmas unconstitutional. Noting that in May 2011, she has come their findings didn’t make them any friends close to realizing her dream. on either side of the political divide, Miles “To actually have this be my praises Cox: “He is a fantastic person to professional home for the collaborate with who has great academic foreseeable future is really and scholarly values and is interested in exciting,” says Das. a thorough and wide-ranging inquiry.” Petite, unassuming, and Posner, echoing Miles, describes Cox as “by reserved, Das is nonetheless “a nature dispassionate rather than ideologi- tenacious advocate, focused and cally inclined, which allows him to under- completely attuned to what really stand and evaluate all points of view.” matters to immigration judges,” Growing up in suburban Detroit, Cox says her mentor and fellow IRC inwas more interested in science than public structor, Professor of Clinical Law policy. His father, an engineer, and mother, Nancy Morawetz ’81. Her stua child psychologist, own a small manufac- dents concur. “What stands
Alina Das ’05
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NYU SCHOOL OF LAW
out is her boisterous laugh and genuine joy when we’re doing well for our clients,” says Stephen Kang ’11. “She encourages us to always keep our clients front and center.” Coming from an immigrant background that often made her feel an “overwhelming otherness,” Das has a personal connection to her specialization at the intersection of immigration and criminal law. With the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, “all the rights that we assume apply to everyone—a day in court, a judge’s discretion—get tossed out the window once the defendant is labeled an immigrant and a criminal,” she says. In “The Immigration Penalties of Criminal Convictions: Resurrecting Categorical Analysis in Immigration Law” (New York University Law Review, forthcoming), Das notes that convictions once triggered a categorical immigration penalty based on the statutory definition of the offense. Today’s courts increasingly permit inquiry into the adverse facts of the crime. She argues for the traditional approach. In “Immigrants and Problem-Solving Courts” (Criminal Justice Review, 2008), Das examined the unintended consequences that incarceration alternatives have on immigrants. Typically, a defendant pleads guilty up front to lessen or erase the offense if he successfully completes a treatment program. But under federal immigration law, officials assert that the plea, coupled with a restraint on one’s liberty (albeit a volunteer program), is grounds for deportation. Joanne Macri, director of the Criminal Defense Immigration Project at the New York State Defenders Association (NYSDA), says Das’s work helped bring about a provision in the Rockefeller Drug Law Reform to waive the up-front guilty plea when it can result in severe consequences such as deportation. Similarly, another brief Das co-authored was cited in Jean-Louis v. Attorney General of the United States, which ruled in favor of categorical analysis. “It’s amazing to see what she’s accomplished in such a short time,” says Macri. “I can’t wait to see what she’s going to do next.” Das and her brother, Shamik, grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with dad, Dilip, and mom, Mala, who encouraged Das to focus on her education. “I was a nerdy, focused student who joined the math club, went to