Michael J. Wishnie

William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law and Counselor to the Dean, Yale Law School

Michael J. Wishnie is William O. Douglas Clinical Professor of Law and Counselor to the Dean at Yale Law School. Professor Wishnie’s teaching, scholarship, and law practice have focused on immigration, labor and employment, habeas corpus, civil rights, government transparency, veterans’ law, and voting rights and democracy. He and his students have been recognized with numerous awards for their civil rights advocacy. Recent notable cases brought by Professor Wishnie and his students, colleagues, and co-counsel include Darweesh v. Trump (E.D.N.Y. 2017) (securing nation-wide injunction against first Muslim Ban ban the day after it was entered); Batalla Vidal v. Nielsen (E.D.N.Y. 2018) (nation-wide injunction against termination of DACA); Monk v. Wilkie (Fed. Cir. 2017) (overturning thirty years of contrary precedent to hold disabled veterans seeking VA benefits may aggregate claims in class actions); Reid v. Donelan (D.Mass.) (appointing clinic as counsel for class of immigrants subject to prolonged detention without bond hearings throughout New England and granting class relief); Kennedy v. Fanning (D.Conn. 2018) (appointing clinic as counsel for nation-wide class of wrongly discharged post-September 11 Army veterans suffering PTSD or traumatic brain injury); Manker v. Spencer (D.Conn. 2018) (same, as to nation-wide class of Navy and Marine Corps veterans); NAACP v. Merrill (2d Cir. 2019) (allowing first challenge to state-wide prison gerrymandering to proceed); NAACP v. Bureau of the Census (D.Mary.) (challenge to underfunding and design flaws in 2020 census that will result in undercount of African-American residents). From 1998 to 2006, Professor Wishnie taught at NYU School of Law. Previously, he worked at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project; in the Brooklyn Neighborhood Office of The Legal Aid Society; and as a law clerk to Judge H. Lee Sarokin (D.N.J./3d Cir.) and Justice Harry A. Blackmun, retired, working in the chambers of Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States.