NIU Law Assistant Dean Anita Maddali provided an in-depth analysis and review of J.C. Salyer’s Book Court of Injustice: Law Without Recognition in U.S. Immigration at the request of Criminal Justice Books, a joint project between Rutgers School of Law and School of Criminal Justice. Salyer, a law and anthropology scholar, details the inequities and punitiveness of immigration laws and policies; but he also explores how law emanates from the practice of adjudication, rather than only emanating from lawmakers and political leaders. In doing so, his aim is constructive, finding possible reversals of power through the adjudication of individual cases, or, at the very least, providing a more nuanced perspective on the system by discussing its limitations, as well as successful outcomes within it. Salyer notes that understanding successful outcomes in individual cases “is as important to understanding how the system operates as is identifying examples where the system seems unfair, inhumane, or unjust” (p. 9).
According to Assistant Dean Maddali, Salyer’s work is an important contribution that should inform academics, the public and policy makers. It is also particularly useful for attorneys working within unjust systems who may feel that their work is for naught. This book shows how critically important their work is and the positive changes that may result from it. Her review also pushes Salyer to consider creative possibilities for resistance outside of the legal system, and from those who do not have the legal status of citizen. Undocumented students, without legal status, have bravely revealed their status to advocate for change and, in doing so, have shown their own resistance and power.
Assistant Dean Maddali also serves as Director of Clinics. She teaches immigration and constitutional law and her research explores the impact of laws and policies on immigrant families. Her articles have been published in the Indiana Law Journal, American University Law Review, the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, and the Brown Journal of World Affairs, and have been cited in state and federal court decisions.
Prior to joining NIU, Assistant Dean Maddali was an Equal Justice Works fellow and later clinical professor at Northwestern University School of Law’s Children and Family Justice Center. She represented women and unaccompanied minors fleeing persecution from Latin American, African and Middle Eastern countries. Additionally, Professor Maddali litigated education, employment discrimination and immigration cases for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and developed a poverty law clinic while working as a visiting clinical professor at DePaul University College of Law. She served as member of the Board of Directors for the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights from 2015-2021 and as Vice Chair for the last three years of her term.
Assistant Dean Maddali received a Master of Divinity from the University of Chicago in 2021. As part of her studies, during the fall and winter of 2020-2021, she provided spiritual care and counseling at a hospital in Chicago to patients and their families, many of whom were experiencing loss, grief, and trauma. She culminated her studies with a thesis that explored shame in the context of illness.