Joe Marguilies

Clinical Associate Professor of Law
Assistant Director, MacArthur Justice Center
Norhtwestern Universtiy School of Law
375 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611

Joe Margulies is an attorney with the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center and an Associate Clinical Professor at Northwestern University Law School in Chicago . He received his B.A., with distinction, from Cornell University in 1982, and his J.D., cum laude, from Northwestern in 1988. After a clerkship with the Hon. William Hart of the Northern District of Illinois, Margulies joined the staff of the Texas Capital Resource Center , where he represented men and women on Texas ’ death row. In 1994, Margulies entered private practice in Minneapolis , specializing in civil rights and capital defense. In 2002, he was the Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at Cornell University Law School , and in 2004, he joined the MacArthur Center . Margulies was Counsel of Record in both Rasul v. Bush (2004), involving the detentions at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, and Munaf v. Geren & Geren v. Omar (2008), involving detentions at Camp Cropper in Iraq . He continues to play a leading role in coordinating the litigation nationwide challenging the Bush Administration’s post-9/11 detention policy.

In June 2005, at the invitation of Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter, Margulies testified at the first Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on detainee issues. He writes and lectures widely on civil liberties in the wake of September 11 and his commentaries have appeared in numerous publications, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Legal Times. He is also the author of the widely acclaimed book, Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (Simon and Schuster 2006). Among other accolades, Guantánamo was named one of the best books of 2006 by The Economist magazine. It also received the prestigious Silver Gavel Award of 2007, given each year by the American Bar Association to the book that best promotes “the American public’s understanding of the law and the legal system.” It also won the Scribes Award of 2007, given each year by the American Association of Legal Writers for the best work of legal scholarship. Margulies has also won numerous awards for his work since 9/11.