Faculty Profiles
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Carolyn Patty Blum
Title: Clinical Professor of Law, Emeritus
Tel: 646-644-3887
Fax: 212-989-0012
Email Address: cpblum@law.berkeley.edu
Carolyn Patty Blum practiced in a legal services agency serving immigrants and refugees for eight years prior to initiating the clinical program in immigration and asylum law at Boalt in 1984. Since then, she has also served as the supervisor of the law school's practitioner-supervised and judicial extern field placement programs. She has been the guiding force behind the creation of Boalt's International Human Rights Law Clinic, which opened in 1998 as part of the school's Center for Clinical Education.
The recipient of two Ford Foundation research grants, Blum has been involved in precedent-setting litigation involving Central American and Haitian refugees, as well as women refugees. She has received three prestigious professional awards: two from the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and one from the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Blum is a widely recognized authority in the area of refugee and asylum law and has lectured widely in her field, including teaching at Hastings College of the Law and the Oxford University Summer Program on Human Rights Law. Her government service included a stint on the Clinton-Gore Transition Team.
Blum's publications include "The Protection of Refugee Women," in Women's International Human Rights (with Nancy Kelly) and "License to Kill: The Principle of the Government's Right to 'Investigate Its Enemies' in Asylum Law" in the Willamette Law Review (1992).
Education:
B.A., University of Arizona (1971)J.D., Northwestern University (1976)
