Jayesh Rathod

Community Advisor

Jayesh Rathod is a law professor and director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at American University Washington College of Law (WCL). He supports the RESPIRAR project on issues relating to noncitizens and workplace rights.

Jayesh's areas of expertise and scholarly interests include immigration law, labor and employment law, and clinical legal education. He has worked on cutting-edge cases and projects relating to immigration detention, removal defense (including criminal-immigration intersections), humanitarian relief, immigrant workers' rights, language access, and more.

From 2018 to 2021, Jayesh served as associate dean for Experiential Education at WCL. In this role, he oversaw the law school's clinical, externship, and trial advocacy programs and fostered new experiential offerings.

Prior to joining the AUWCL faculty, Jayesh was a staff attorney at CASA, a Latino and immigration advocacy and assistance organization based in Maryland. There, he represented immigrant day laborers, domestic workers, and union members on immigration and employment law matters.

After graduating from law school, he practiced at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) and clerked for the late Honorable Louis F. Oberdorfer on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Throughout his career, Jayesh has received awards for his public interest lawyering, innovative teaching, and efforts to promote the advancement of justice. In 2018, he received the Pauline Ruyle Moore Award for outstanding scholarship in the area of public law. In 2023, the Society of American Law Teachers awarded him its Great Teacher Award for his contributions to the legal academy.

Jayesh was also a Fulbright Scholar at two universities in Brazil, where he taught courses on U.S. immigration law and comparative migration policy and conducted research on the Brazilian immigration system. He is fluent in Spanish and proficient in Portuguese.

Jayesh received his bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University and his J.D. from Columbia Law School.