An experienced clinical teacher and lawyer, Jayashri Srikantiah is the founder and director of the law school’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. She and students in the clinic have represented scores of immigrant survivors of domestic violence and immigrants facing removal because of past criminal convictions. Professor Srikantiah and clinic students have also conducted multimodal advocacy—including impact litigation, community outreach, public education, and policy advocacy—on behalf of a broad range of immigration nonprofits, on issues ranging from immigration detention to protections for immigrant survivors of domestic violence. The clinic has litigated cases in the immigration courts, the federal district courts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Clinic students and Professor Srikantiah are currently conducting litigation challenging the federal government’s practice of subjecting immigrants to prolonged detention pending deportation proceedings, as well as litigation seeking to uncover the federal government’s practice of deporting certain immigrants without hearings.

Professor Srikantiah’s research and scholarly work explores the role of administrative discretion in immigration decision making in various areas, including human trafficking and immigration detention; and the pedagogy of multi-modal law clinics. Her current research concentrates on developing teaching methods for clinics representing institutional clients; the early history of immigration detention; and the sufficiency of streamlined deportation procedures. Professor Srikantiah is also a frequent speaker on various immigration topics, including comprehensive immigration reform, immigration and national security, and immigration detention.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2004, Professor Srikantiah was the associate legal director of the ACLU of Northern California and a staff attorney at the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. Professor Srikantiah has also worked as an associate at the law firm of Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin, and was a law clerk to Judge David R. Thompson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.