Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer

Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School

Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer joined the Cornell Law faculty in 2017. She founded and directs Cornell’s first 1L clinic, the Immigration Law & Advocacy Clinic (ILAC). She also teaches or has taught Immigration Law, advanced ILAC, first-year Lawyering, Clinic Spanish Conversation, and seminars relating to migration and the law. She directs Path2Papers (P2P), a pro bono project of ILAC launched in 2024 that helps Dreamers pursue work visas and other pathways to lawful permanent residency. She also co-directs the Migration and Human Rights Program at Cornell, an interdisciplinary effort housing various thematic projects such as ILAC and P2P.

Professor Kelley-Widmer is an expert in immigration law. Her practice experience spans the spectrum of immigration law, including representing clients in cases for asylum, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), naturalization, special immigrant juvenile status, visas for survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence, employment-based visas, and cases for release from detention through parole and habeas corpus.

Through her clinic, Professor Kelley-Widmer supervises students in providing legal services for immigrants in the Cornell community and nationally and directs three primary projects: (1) detention advocacy, through which students have worked in facilities in New York, Louisiana, and TexasCornell Legal Information Project (CLIP), which provides immigration-related legal information presentations for individuals and organizations in upstate New York; and (3) the Path2Papers project, which innovates in employment-based visas nationally for immigrants with vulnerable status.

Professor Kelley-Widmer is a regular contributor to the scholarly and public conversation in immigration law. Her scholarship focuses on themes of clinical pedagogy and immigration law at the intersection of administrative law or as informed by social sciences research. Her scholarship has appeared in journals including the Brooklyn Law Review, Clinical Law Review, Oregon Law Review, San Francisco Law Review, Kentucky Law Journal, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, and the Michigan Journal of Race and Law. She has published shorter pieces on emerging immigration issues in Bloomberg, Washington Post, and other outlets. Her work has been featured on NPR, in the Cornell Daily Sun, and in other media.

Previously, she was an Equal Justice Works fellow at La Raza Centro Legal in San Francisco, where she focused on representing immigrant youth and their families in their applications for immigration relief. She also taught legal writing at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and clerked at the San Francisco Immigration Court through the Department of Justice Honors Program.

Professor Kelley-Widmer is a member of the California Bar and admitted in the Northern District of California and Western District of New York. She is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Finger Lakes Women’s Bar Association and an advisory board member for the local non-profit Ithaca Welcomes Refugees. She is fluent in Spanish.