Denise L Gilman
- Clinical Professor
- Co-Director, Immigration Clinic
Faculty Profile: Denise L Gilman
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Denise Gilman teaches and directs the Immigration Clinic after having joined the clinical faculty at the University of Texas Law School in the fall of 2007. Professor Gilman received her undergraduate degree with honors in political science from Northwestern University. She received her law degree from Columbia University School of Law where she served on the Law Review. Professor Gilman also has an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Gilman clerked for Judge Thomas M. Reavley, at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She is fluent in Spanish.
Professor Gilman has written and practiced extensively in the international human rights and immigrants' rights fields. From 2000 to 2005, Professor Gilman was Director of the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. At the Lawyers' Committee, Professor Gilman coordinated the representation of political asylum applicants by pro bono attorneys and engaged in advocacy on issues of significance to the newcomer community. She also investigated and litigated individual and impact cases involving law enforcement abuses against immigrants and discrimination against newcomers in housing and employment. From 1995-2000, Professor Gilman served as Human Rights Specialist at the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights at the Organization of American States and then Director of the Mexico Project at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First). Professor Gilman made her transition from legal practice to clinical teaching through completion of a two-year clinical teaching fellowship at the Georgetown University Law Center from 2005-2007.
Professor Gilman has been appointed by the President of the American Bar Association to serve as a member of the ABA Commission on Immigration for several terms. In 2021, Casa Marianella honored Professor Gilman and the Immigration Clinic with its Ed Wendler Award for Outstanding Service to the Immigrant Community. In 2019, Professor Gilman received a University of Texas Tower Award as the Outstanding Community Based Learning Professor. In 2005, she received the Community Outreach Recognition and Opportunity ("CORO") Award from the D.C. Court of Appeals. In 2003, Professor Gilman received an "Excellence in Lawyering" award from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Professor Gilman served on the board of the Central American Resource Center in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Professor Gilman's scholarship includes: Immigration Detention, Inc., 6 J. Migration & Hum. Sec. 145 (2018) (peer-reviewed) (co-authored with Luis A. Romero); To Loose the Bonds: The Deceptive Promise of Freedom from Pretrial Immigration Detention, 92 Indiana L.J. 157 (2016); Realizing Liberty: The Use Of International Human Rights Law To Realign Immigration Detention In The United States, 36 Fordham Int'l L.J. 243 (2013); A "Bilingual" Approach to Language Rights, 24 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 1 (2011); Calling the United States' Bluff: How Sovereign Immunity Undermines the United States' Claim to an Effective Domestic Human Rights System, 95 Geo. L.J. 591 (2007).
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Courses for Fall 2023
View Course HistoryProfessional Activities
2022
September 15, 2022
Panelist
Webinar
UNHCR, International Law, UNHCR Guidance, and Their Strategic Use in Representation and Litigation
2021
November 8, 2021
Panelist
Harvard Law School Human Rights Program
Abusing Public Health Powers at the Border: Litigating Title 42 Deportations before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
August 19, 2021
Panelist
2021 AILA Asylum Virtual Conference
Nexus: Effectively Presenting Your Argument Without Dissecting the Mind of the Persecutor
June 11, 2021
Panelist
American Immigration Lawyers Association Annual Conference
Fighting for Procedural Due Process in Immigration Proceedings
2020
November 18, 2020
Panelist
American Immigration Lawyers Association Federal Court Litigation Section
Supreme Court Roundup
November 8, 2019
Panelist
Metropolis North American Migration Policy Forum (Third Annual), San Diego, California
Restrictive Asylum Policies, Mobility Control and Stranded Refugees on North America's Borders
July 22, 2020
Panelist
Texas A&M School of Law CLE Webinar
Requesting Bond, Parole, and Custody Review During COVID-19
February 14, 2020
Panelist
ABA Mid-Year Conference CLE
Fight to Preserve Safe Haven in the United States
2019
December 17, 2019
Panelist
Doctors without Borders, Blanton Museum, Austin, Texas
Defending Humanity: Caring for Refugees and Migrants Trapped in Danger
October 17, 2019
Panelist
ABA Webinar
Remain in Mexico - The Facts, the Fiction, and Methods to Challenge this Unprecedented Rebuke of America's Asylum System
September 13, 2019
Panelist
2019 AILA Fall CLE Conference, Park City, Utah
Removal Skills - Custody Basics
June 5, 2019
Presentation
University of London
Refugee Law Initiative Annual Conference - The Multiplying Immigration Mechanisms for Legal and Physical Exclusion from the US Asylum Process
January 3, 2019
AALS Annual Meeting
New Orleans, LA
Within their Grasp: Admitting, Financing and Supporting DREAMERS and DACA Students
2018
October 18, 2018
Presentation, University of Gothenburg Law Clinic and Center for Global Migration
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Asylum and Refugee Law in the USA – What is Happening Nationally and at the Texas/Mexico Border?
September 28, 2018
Mexico’s Political Earthquake: The 2018 Elections, Democracy and Binational Relations
University of Texas, Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies
Migration in United States-Mexico Relations Moving Forward
February 17, 2018
American Association for the Advancement of Science 2018 Annual Meeting
Austin, Texas
Migration: A case for Science Diplomacy?
2017
December 7, 2017
9th Worldwide Global Alliance for Justice Conference
Puebla, Mexico
Cross-Border Clinical Collaboration to Provide Legal Aid and Advocacy for Asylum Seekers
June 2017
Law and Society 2017 International Meeting
Mexico City
Immigration Detention, Inc.
April 2017
Immigration Detention in the Age of Migration and Control
USC Gould School of Law
Detention and Inequality
April 2017
American Immigration Law: The New Colossus
Texas A&M Law Review Symposium
What Do New Policies Mean for Immigrants and Refugees
January 2017
AALS Annual Meeting Discussion Group
San Francisco, CA
The Central American Refugee Crisis: A Discussion of the Current Response and Evaluation of U.S. Legal Obligations under Domestic and International Law
2016
July 7, 2016
Rethinking the Global Refugee Protection System
SUNY Global Center, New York
Talk - Refugee and Unaccompanied Children: Family Detention
2015
September 17, 2015
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, Central American Refugees in Detention: Rethinking U.S. Immigration
UCLA
Opening Keynote – UnFAMILIAr Policies? The Detention of Central American Refugee Families
July 31, 2015
Panel - Women and Children First: Is Family Detention Really Justified and Necessary?
American Bar Association Annual Meeting
June 12, 2015
Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers’ Network Annual Human Rights in the U.S. Symposium/CLE: Engaging with the Inter-American Human Rights System for U.S. Advocacy
New York, NY
Speaker - Strategies for Effective Engagement