Detention of Suspected Terrorists

Professor Jonathan Hafetz focuses his research on constitutional, criminal, and international law. Professor Hafetz is an expert on national security, human rights, and international justice issues. He joined Seton Hall Law School as an Associate Professor in 2010. Professor Hafetz is the author of Habeas Corpus after 9/11: Confronting America’s New Global Detention System (NYU Press 2011), which received the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts, Honorable Mention, and the American Society of Legal Writers, Scribes Silver Medal Award. He is the co-editor (with Mark Denbeaux) of The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law (NYU Press 2009). Professor Hafetz’s scholarship has appeared in many publications, including the Yale Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, Columbia Law Review Sidebar, Wisconsin Law Review, William & Mary Law Review, International Journal of Human Rights, and Cambridge Journal of Comparative & International Law, and has been cited by numerous courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. He is currently working on a book about international criminal justice, to be published by Cambridge University Press.

Professor Hafetz is also an internationally recognized constitutional and human rights lawyer. Prior to joining Seton Hall, he litigated numerous high-profile cases as a senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, a litigation director at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, and a John J. Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Law at Gibbons, P.C. Representative cases include Al-Marri v. Spagone, 555 U.S. 1220 (2009), Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008), Munaf v. Geren, 553 U.S. 674 (2008), Rasul v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 466 (2004), Meshal v. Higgenbotham, (D.C. Cir. 2015), Salahi v. Obama, 625 F.3d 740 (D.C. Cir. 2010), and Jawad v. Obama (D.D.C. 2009). Mr. Hafetz has also authored or co-authored more than thirty amicus curiae briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals on a range of issues.

Professor Hafetz has lectured widely both in the United States and abroad, including in the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, Israel, Taiwan, Poland, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. From 2014-15, Professor Hafetz was a Visiting Research Scholar in the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Mr. Hafetz has testified before Congress, and frequently provides expert commentary for major media outlets and news programs. His op-eds have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Review, The Nation, Politico, The American Prospect, and The Guardian. He is a frequent blogger for legal websites in his field. Professor Hafetz currently chairs the New York City Bar Task Force on National Security and the Rule of Law. He has served as a consultant to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Open Society Foundations.

Professor Hafetz earned his J.D. from Yale Law School. He holds an M. Phil in Modern History from Oxford University and a B.A. from Amherst College. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship from the U.S. Government for study in Mexico. Following law school, Professor Hafetz served as a law clerk to Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and Judge Sandra L. Lynch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.