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Elizabeth A. Wilson

Visiting Assistant Professor of Law

Elizabeth A. Wilson teaches Human Rights Law and Public International Law at the Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University.

Professor Wilson graduated from Harvard Law School in 2003. She then worked as an associate at two Washington D.C. law firms where she became deeply involved in the litigation on behalf of Guantanamo detainees. She worked on the early years of Boumediene v. Bush, a case that was eventually decided in detainees’ favor by the Supreme Court in 2008. She also coordinated and drafted the report by the Center for Constitutional Rights on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and was involved in lobbying efforts to defeat the habeas stripping provisions of the Detainee Treatment Act. Later, she drafted appellate briefs for a civil damages case against U.S. officials for torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and religious abuse on behalf of former Guantanamo Bay detainees (Rasul v. Rumsfeld). She also worked on habeas petitions brought on behalf of detainees in Bagram AFB and Pulicharky prison, Afghanistan (Ruzatullah v. Gates).

In Summer 2008, Professor Wilson was a consultant project director for the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University Law School and Visiting Professor of International Law at George Washington Law School.

Professor Wilson also holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature and literary theory from the University of Pennsylvania and was an Assistant Professor of English at Yale University. She has taught at Humboldt University (Germany) as a DAAD recipient and at Frankfurt University (Germany) as a Fulbright Scholar.


RECENT PUBLICATIONS

“Is Torture All in a Day’s Work? Scope of Employment, the Absolute Immunity Doctrine, and Human Rights Litigation Against U.S. Federal Officials,” 6 Rutgers J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 175 (Fall 2008)

“The War on Terrorism and ‘The Water’s Edge’: Sovereignty, ‘Terretorial Jurisdiction,’ and the Reach of the U.S. Constitution in the Guantanamo Detainee Litigation,” 8 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 165 (March 2006)

“Suing for Lost Childhood: Child Sexual Abuse, the Delayed Discovery Rule, and the Problem of Finding Justice for Adult-Survivors of Child Abuse,” 12 UCLA Women’s L.J. 445 (Spring 2003)