Denise Gilman

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: Making Protection Unexceptional: A Reconceptualization of the U.S. Asylum System, 55 Loyola Univ. Chicago L.J. 1 (2023); 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).