Vanessa H. Merton
- Professor of Law
BA, Radcliffe College
JD, New York University School of Law
Professor Vanessa Merton teaches and directs the Immigration Justice Clinic (“IJC”) at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. The IJC provides free legal services to noncitizens who otherwise could not afford legal assistance, including representation on applications for asylum or family-based status, in removal proceedings at state and federal detention facilities, and on petitions for crime victims and juvenile immigrants. IJC Student Attorneys litigate in the Immigration Court, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the federal courts, but also conduct community “Know Your Rights” programs, engage in legislative advocacy under the auspices of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the New York Immigration Coalition, and have spent several spring breaks volunteering at immigrant detention centers on the southern border.
For 15 years Professor Merton served as Haub Law’s Associate Dean for Clinical Education and Executive Director of John Jay Legal Services, while creating and teaching clinics in Access to Health Care and Prosecution of Domestic Violence and designing and developing the Pace Community Law Practice, a legal incubator program that delivered low-bono legal services while preparing recent graduates to establish their own self-sustaining practices or become public interest lawyers.
Professor Merton also was a member of the founding faculty of the innovative City University of New York School of Law, New York City’s only public, affordable law school providing a social justice-focused curriculum for a nontraditional diverse student body. She began her career in legal education as a clinical professor at New York University School of Law. Her prior practice experience includes the Criminal Defense Division of the Legal Aid Society of New York and pro bono Trial Counsel at the First Department Disciplinary Committee.
Professor Merton is especially proud of her two decades on the Advisory Board of the Mount Sinai-Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, which in 2012 named her “Woman of the Year,” and as founding Chair of the Institutional Review Board of the Community Research Initiative of the People with AIDS Coalition and member of the AIDS Medical Research Foundation Institutional Review Board.
Professor Merton is honored to have received the 2012 Pace Law Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence, the 1995 Pace Graduating Class Outstanding Law Professor Award, the 1988 CUNY Law Distinguished Service Award for Teaching Effectiveness, and the 2012 Elmer Fried Excellence in Teaching Award of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.