Biography
Professor Jennifer Koh joined the Pepperdine Caruso Law faculty in 2021 and brings
an extensive background in teaching, scholarship and service to the law school. Her
research focuses on the convergence of the immigration enforcement and criminal legal
systems; the legal frameworks governing deportation, particularly streamlined procedures
taking place outside the immigration courts; and the federal courts' treatment of
immigration claims. Her scholarship has appeared in journals such as the Yale Law
Journal, Washington University Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Stanford
Law Review Online, Duke Law Journal Online, North Carolina Law Review, Florida Law
Review, and Wisconsin Law Review. Various federal courts—including the United States
Supreme Court—have cited Professor Koh's scholarship. She has appeared in the Los
Angeles Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Law360, Orange County Register
and various other media outlets and podcasts.
Professor Koh teaches Criminal Law and Evidence at Pepperdine. She has also taught
doctrinal courses in Immigration Law, Administrative Law and the Legal Profession,
and directed clinical programs and supervised students in a wide range of immigration
matters. Most recently, she held visiting faculty positions at UC Irvine School of
Law and the University of Washington School of Law. She began her teaching career
as a teaching fellow and lecturer at Stanford Law School, and served on the full-time
faculty at Western State College of Law.
Professor Koh joins the law school as the Co-Director of the Nootbaar Institute on
Law, Religion and Ethics. She has written about the impact of Christians conceptions
of love on immigration law discourse in the U.S., and has spoken on immigration and
social justice to numerous faith-based audiences across the country. For the past
decade, she has been active at NewSong Church in Santa Ana, CA.
Much of Professor Koh's career has been devoted to serving immigrant communities and
advancing social justice amongst underserved populations. She helped found the nonprofit
organization the Orange County Justice Fund in 2017, and continues to serve on its
Board of Directors. She also sits on the Board of Directors for the Public Law Center.
She is a recipient of the Orange County Hispanic Bar Association's Attorney of the
Year Award and the Ethnic Studies Award from Chapman University's Attallah College
of Educational Studies.
Professor Koh received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her B.A. from Yale University.
Earlier in her career, she clerked for the Honorable Eugene H. Nickerson of the Eastern
District of New York, directed a community lawyering project aimed at serving Asian
immigrant survivors of domestic abuse at Sanctuary for Families' Center for Battered
Women's Legal Services in New York City, and a litigation associate in the New York
and Palo Alto offices of the law firm WilmerHale.
Executive Defiance and the Deportation State, 130 Yale Law Journal 948 (2021) SSRN
Downsizing the Deportation State, __ Harvard Law & Policy Review __ (forthcoming 2021)
Barricading the Immigration Courts, 69 Duke Law Journal Online 48 (2020) SSRN
Crimmigration Beyond the Headlines: The Board of Immigration Appeals' Quiet Expansion
of the Meaning of Moral Turpitude, 71 Stanford Law Review Online 267 (2019) SSRN
Reflections on Elitism After the Closing of a Clinic: Pedagogy, Justice and Scholarship, 26 Clinical Law Review 263 (2019) SSRN
Looking Ahead at Vagueness Claims Post-Dimaya, 48 Southwestern Law Review 525 (2019) (symposium remarks) SSRN
When Shadow Removals Collide: Searching for Solutions to the Legal Black Holes Created
by Expedited Removal and Reinstatement, 96 Washington University Law Review 337 (2018) SSRN
Removal in the Shadows of Immigration Court, 90 Southern California Law Review 181 (2017) SSRN
Anticipating Expansion, Committing to Resistance: Removal in the Shadows of Immigration
Court Under Trump, 43 Ohio Northern Law Review 459 (2017) (symposium essay) SSRN
Crimmigration and the Void for Vagueness Doctrine, 2016 Wisconsin Law Review 1127 (2016) SSRN
Integrating Skills and Collaborating Across Law Schools: An Example from Immigration
Law, 16 Nevada Law Journal 147 (2015) (with Anna Welch) SSRN
Rethinking Removability, 65 Florida Law Review 1803 (2013) SSRN
Waiving Due Process (Goodbye): Stipulated Orders of Removal and the Crisis in Immigration
Adjudication, 91 North Carolina Law Review 475 (2013) SSRN
The Whole Better than the Sum: A Case for the Categorical Approach to Determining
the Immigration Consequences of Crime, 26 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 257 (2012) SSRN
Teaching Individual Representation Alongside Institutional Advocacy Projects: Pedagogical
Implications of a Combined Advocacy Clinic, 16 Clinical Law Review 451 (2010) (with Jayashri Srikantiah) SSRN
Agape Love, Grace and Immigration: An Evangelical Perspective, book chapter in AGAPE, JUSTICE AND LAW: HOW MIGHT CHRISTIAN LOVE SHAPE LAW? (Robert
Cochran and Zachary Calo, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2017) (book chapter) SSRN
Suzanne Monyak, Barrett's Textualism Could Doom Immigration Challenges, Law 360, Sept. 28, 2020
Blanca Ramirez, Interview with Professor Jennifer Lee Koh, USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration Blog, Dec. 5, 2019
Suzanne Monyak, Barr to Rethink When Theft Should Trigger Deportation, Law 360, November 22, 2019
Suzanne Monyak, Confused About Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude? Join the Club, Law 360, June 16, 2019
Cindy Knoebel, Women on the Frontlines of Immigration: Interview with Jennifer Lee Koh, Imm-Print, April 18, 2019
Police Force You've Likely Never Heard of Accused of Helping ICE Detain People Illegally, NBC Los Angeles News, March 21, 2019
Immigration Law and Reform with Professor Jennifer Koh, McGeorge School of Law Capital Center for Law & Policy Podcast, January 17, 2019
Jennifer Lee Koh & Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Deport, Not Court? The U.S. is Already Doing That, Los Angeles Times (op-ed), July 2, 2018 (op-ed)
Henry Gass, With 'Zero Tolerance,' New Strain on Already Struggling Immigration Courts, Christian Science Monitor, July 9, 2018
Salvador Rizzo, President Trump's Misconceptions About Immigration Courts and Law, Washington Post, July 26, 2018
Bernice Yeung, ICE Tried to Deport Children Applying for Green Cards; The Courts Stopped it, Reveal, June 22, 2018
Claudia Shambaugh, Ask A Leader: Jennifer Koh, KUCI Radio, October 9, 2018
Patrick Michels, Profitable Policing, Reveal, Sept. 22, 2017
Yvette Cabrera, The Unlikely Story of the Undocumented Attorneys Fighting for the Lives of their Undocumented
Clients, Think Progress, August 15, 2017
Chris Haire, Immigration Lawyers Ask Santa Ana City Council to Fund Deportation Defense, Orange County Register, June 29, 2017
High Court to Weigh Murky Crime-of-Violence Definition, Law360, January 13, 2017
Yvette Cabrera, Immigration Advocates Fighting to Keep State Gang Database Away from Trump, Voice of OC, December 4, 2016
Executive Defiance and the Deportation State
Syracuse Law School, Faculty Scholarship series, October 2021 (expected
Tulane Law School, Center on Law and Economy and Murphy Institute colloquium, Feb.
2, 2021
Yale Law Journal Scholarship Workshop, Oct. 21, 2020 (virtual)
University of Washington School of Law Faculty Colloquium, Oct. 2, 2020 (virtual)
Clinical Law Review Writers’ Workshop, Oct. 3, 2020
Panelist, After Trump: New Horizons for Immigration Law, UC Irvine School of Law,
June 8, 2021 (virtual)
Moderator, Retaliatory Surveillance: Can the Constitution Protect Us?, Villanova
Law School, June 2, 2021 (virtual)
Panelist, Rulemaking 101, American Bar Association Administrative Law Section Annual
Conference, May 7, 2021 (virtual)
Moderator, Teaching Immigration Law: Law School Clinics in the US and UK, Border Criminologies,
March 18, 2021 (virtual)
Panelist, Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California,
University of Texas School of Law Federalist Society, Sept. 14, 2020 (virtual)
Panelist, Litigating in the New Age of Agency Deference, American Immigration Lawyers
Association Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, July 22, 2020 (virtual)
Panelist, Evaluating the Criminal Justice and Immigration Platforms of the Democratic
Presidential Candidates, University of Nevada-Las Vegas Boyd School of Law, Law Vegas,
NV, February 18, 2020
Barricading the Immigration Courts, University of Nevada-Las Vegas Boyd School of
Law Faculty Enrichment Series, Nevada, Las Vegas, February 18, 2020
Panelist, The New World in Context: Immigration Adjudication, Duke Law Journal Administrative
Law Symposium, Durham, NC, February 14, 2020
