Dartmouth College, B.A.
New York University, M.A., J.D.
Georgetown University, L.L.M.
Professor Stephen Meili is the Supervising Attorney in the Law School's Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, where students represent asylum-seekers and detained individuals in Immigration Court and before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit.
Professor Meili's research interests complement his clinical teaching. He is currently working on a comparative study of asylum law and procedure in four countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom) that rely on international human rights law in rendering decisions on asylum claims. The study will include interviews with lawyers, judges, and social movement activists in each of these countries. In addition, Professor Meili has co-authored (with his University of Minnesota colleague David Weissbrodt) two forthcoming works on human rights issues: Human Rights and Protection of Non-Citizens: Whither Universality and Indivisibility of Rights? (Refugee Survey Quarterly) and a chapter on human trafficking in an edited volume to be published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Professor Meili has also published numerous articles and chapters in edited volumes on lawyers and the legal profession, civil procedure, comparative law, and consumer protection. His most recent publications in these areas include Collective Justice Or Personal Gain?: An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Class Action Lawyers and Named Plaintiffs. (forthcoming, University of Akron Law Review); Consumer Protection (Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Studies, forthcoming in 2010); Staying Alive: Public Interest Law in Contemporary Latin American (International Review of Constitutionalism, 2009); and Of Course He Just Stood There: He's the Law': Two Depictions of Cause Lawyers in Post-Authoritarian Chile (2008).
Prior to coming to the Law School in 2008, Professor Meili was on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he directed the Consumer Law Litigation Clinic for 17 years. As Director, he supervised the litigation of cases resulting in important federal and state court precedent in the areas of mandatory arbitration clauses, rent-to-own contracts, class certification, antitrust law, and ERISA. He also frequently testified at legislative hearings on a variety of consumer protection issues.
Professor Meili's teaching interests include Immigration Law, Civil Procedure, Consumer Law, and Practice and Professionalism. He created the University of Wisconsin Law School's Pre-Trial Advocacy course, which trains students in a variety of lawyering skills.
After receiving his J.D. from New York University School of Law, Professor Meili held a graduate fellowship at the Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation, where he supervised law students on litigation and legislative projects in immigration, consumer, and environmental law. Prior to his academic career, he was a partner in a plaintiffs'-side employment law firm in Hartford, Connecticut.
A Citizen's Guide to Personal and Government Records (Center for Public Representation, 3d ed., 1993)
Book Chapters
Recent Developments in the Human Rights of Trafficked Persons, in Human Rights and Migration: Trafficking for Forced Labour 193 (Christien van den Anker & Ilse van Liempt, eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) (with David Weissbrodt)
Consumer Protection, in The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research (Peter Cane & Herbert M. Kritzer, eds., Oxford University Press, 2010)
"Of course he just stood there; he's the law": Two Depictions of Cause Lawyers in Post-Authoritarian Chile, in The Cultural Lives of Cause Lawyers (Austin Sarat & Stuart Scheingold, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Consumer Cause Lawyers in the United States: Lawyers for the Movement or a Movement unto Themselves, in Cause Lawyers and Social Movements (Austin Sarat & Stuart Scheingold, eds., Stanford Law and Politics, 2006)
Cause Lawyering for Collective Justice: A Case Study of the Amparo Colectivo in Argentina, in The World Cause Lawyers Make: Structure and Agency in Legal Practice (Austin Sarat & Stuart Scheingold, eds., Stanford Law and Politics, 2005)
Consumer Actions, in Methods of Practice (Jay E. Grenig, James B. MacDonald & Nathan A. Fishback, eds., Thomson/West, 4th ed., 2004)
Latin American Cause-Lawyering Networks, in Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era (Austin Sarat & Stuart Scheingold, eds., Oxford University Press, 2001)
Legal Education in Argentina and Chile, in Educating for Justice Around the World: Legal Education, Legal Practice, and the Community (Louise G. Trubek & Jeremy Cooper, eds., Ashgate/Dartmouth, 1999)
Cause Lawyers and Social Movements: A Comparative Perspective on Democratic Change in Argentina and Brazil, in Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities (Austin Sarat & Stuart Scheingold, eds., Oxford University Press, 1998)
Journal Articles
Collective Justice or Personal Gain? An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Class Action Lawyers and Named Plaintiffs, 44 Akron Law Review 67 (2011)
Human Rights and Protection of Non-Citizens: Whither Universality and Indivisibility of Rights?, 28 Refugee Survey Quarterly 34 (2010), reprinted in Vulnerable and Marginalised Groups and Human Rights (David Weissbrodt & Mary Rumsey, eds., Edward Elgar, 2011) (with David Weissbrodt)
Staying Alive: Public Interest Law in Contemporary Latin American, 9 International Review of Constitutionalism 43 (2009)
Alternative Dispute Resolution in a New Health Care System: Will it Work for Everyone?, 10 Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution 23 (1994) (with Tamara Packard)
The Interaction between Lawyers and Grass Roots Social Movements in Brazil, 3 Beyond Law (Instituto Latinoamericano de Servicios Legales Alternativas) 61 (July 1993) (Working Paper ILS 5-2, Institute for Legal Studies, University of Wisconsin Law School (July 1993))
Book Reviews & Review Essays
Book Review, 18 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 169 (2003) (reviewing Peter Cartwright, Consumer Protection and the Criminal Law (Cambridge University Press, 2001))
Your Consumer Rights (Consumer Law Litigation Clinic, University of Wisconsin Law School, 3d ed., 2007); translated into Spanish, Sus derechos como consumidor (Consumer Law Litigation Clinic, University of Wisconsin Law School, 3a. ed., 2007)
