Jon Dubin

Professor Dubin completed his A.B. from Dartmouth College in three years with distinction in government and J.D. from N.Y.U. Law School where he was an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Fellow. He served as law clerk to U.S. District Judge John L. Kane Jr.; assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; director of litigation and staff attorney for the Harlem Neighborhood Office of the Legal Aid Society, Civil Division; assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Bureau of the N.Y. Attorney General's Office; and Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow on the American Civil Liberties Union’s national staff. Prior to joining Rutgers faculty, he was Professor of Law and Director of Clinical Programs at St. Mary’s Law School, where he received the faculty award for teaching excellence, founded and directed the first in-house, "live-client" clinic, served as the founding faculty advisor to the Black Allied Law Students Association (BALSA) and coach of the Frederick Douglass Moot Court Team. He joined the Rutgers faculty in 1999 as a tenured Professor of Law and served as the first Director and Dean of Clinical Education for 20 years, from 2002-22.

He has authored or co-authored numerous books on Social Security Law, Policy or Practice including: Social Security Disability Law and The American Labor Market (New York University Press, 2021);  Social Security Law and Practice in a Nutshell (Co-authored with Frank S. Bloch, West Academic Pub. Co. 2022); Social Security Disability Law and Procedure in Federal Court (Co-authored with Carolyn A. Kubitschek, Thompson Reuters Pub. Co., 2024- 2011; 14 separate annual treatise editions); Social Security Law, Policy and Practice: Cases and Materials (Co-authored with Frank S. Bloch, West Academic Pub. Co., 2016) (First hardcover Social Security law coursebook); Teacher’s Manual to Social Security Law, Policy and Practice: Cases and Materials (Co-authored with Frank S. Bloch, West Academic Pub. Co., 2016; updated edition, 2023); and Update/Supplement to Social Security Law, Policy and Practice: Cases and Materials (Co-Authored with Frank S. Bloch, West Academic Pub. Co., 2024-2017; 8 separate annual update editions).

In 2002, the National Equal Justice Library selected his article, Torquemada Meets Kafka: The Misapplication of the Issue Exhaustion Doctrine to Inquisitorial Administrative Proceedings, 97 Colum. L. Rev. 1289 (1997) (lead article), for the second biennial Edgar and Jean Cahn Award as one of three outstanding articles about equal justice for lower income persons published during the entire 20th century. The U.S. Supreme Court twice cited the article, followed its reasoning, and adopted its doctrinal label, “issue exhaustion,” in the text of Sims v. Apfel, 530 U.S. 103, 111-12 (2000). In Sims,  Professor Dubin also served as co-counsel, principal drafter of the Petitioner's brief and principal strategist of the Petitioner’s position in the U.S. Supreme Court in this successful challenge to application of the newly labelled "issue exhaustion" doctrine, to preserve access to justice in federal court and meaningful court review of SSA administrative law judge decisions. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Seventh and Eighth Circuits cited and followed the article’s reasoning a year earlier in Johnson v. Apfel, 189 F.3d 561, 562-64 (7th Cir. 1999) (Posner, C.J.) (reversing six earlier decisions based on the article’s position and inviting en banc consideration); and Harwood v. Apfel, 186 F.3d 1039, 1042-43 (8th Cir. 1999), which created the conflict with other circuits justifying certiorari in Sims. In 2020-21, he served as counsel of record and a principal author of a Supreme Court Amici Curiae brief on behalf of 56 Law Professors from 40 Law Schools successfully arguing for extending Sims to reject issue exhaustion as applied to structural constitutional issues in SSA ALJ hearing proceedings, in Carr v. Saul, 141 S. Ct. 1352 (2021).

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court cited two more of Professor Dubin's writings in Biestek v. Berryhill, 139 S. Ct. 1148 (2019): his law review article, Overcoming Gridlock: Campbell after a Quarter-Century and Bureaucratically Rational Gap-Filling in Mass Justice Adjudication in the Social Security Administration's Disability Programs, 62 Admin. L. Rev. 937 (2010), in the text of the dissenting opinion; and the 2019 edition of his co-authored treatise, Social Security Disability Law and Procedure in Federal Court (co-authored with Carolyn A. Kubitschek, Thomson Reuters Publishing Co., 2019 Ed.), in the text of the majority opinion.  

A much earlier article, “From Junkyards to Gentrification: Explicating a Right to Protective Zoning in Low-Income Communities of Color” (Minnesota Law Review), was peer-reviewed and selected for inclusion in an anthology issue of Clark-Boardman’s Land Use and Environment Law Review as one of the best land-use articles of the year.

Professor Dubin received the 2003 Haywood Burns/Shanara Gilbert Award from the Northeast Regional People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference for "scholarship and action that advances the legal, social and economic position of people of color;" the 2007 Stanley Van Ness Leadership Award in Public Interest Law from the New Jersey Public Interest Law Center/New Jersey Appleseed for career contributions in public interest law; the 2010 Oliver Randolph Award from the Garden State Bar Association for contributions to the civil rights of African Americans; the 2014 Eileen P. Sweeney Award from the National Organization of Social Security Claimants' Representatives for "outstanding service to improve the quality and availability of advocacy for social security claimants and to improve the social security adjudicative process;"  the 2024 William Pincus Award from the AALS Clinical Section for outstanding accomplishments in and service to clinical legal education; and the 2014 Clinical Legal Education Association's Award for outstanding contributions and accomplishments on behalf of clinical legal education and clinical law teachers. In 2016, he was elected into the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonprofit organization comprised of “the nation’s leading experts on social insurance and social welfare policy” who have made "distinguished and continuing achievements in the field.”

He has been chair of the AALS Poverty Law Section, a member of the ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty, Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) Social Security Disability Adjudication Working Group and National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) Racially Motivated Violence Committee; and a board member of the Clinical Law Review, Clinical Legal Education Association, Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law, National Center on Law and Economic Justice, New Jersey Institute for Social Justice and the San Antonio Fair Housing Council. He has provided testimony to Congress and the New Jersey Legislature on administrative adjudication and access to justice issues and served as a pro bono consultant for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Since 1990, he has taught in clinical courses for low-income and homeless clients and supervised clinical student work and led clinic litigation in a dozen successful social security disability cases in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third and Fifth Circuits, a successful appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court, major parts of a multi-decade housing discrimination and low-income public housing preservation class action in U.S. District Court in Newark, and over 200 evidentiary hearings for clinic clients. He served as co-counsel for the Rutgers clinical program in a successful challenge in the N.J. Supreme Court to application of the N.J. Open Public Records Act to public law school clinical programs' case files and faculty and student notes, in Sussex Commons, LLC v. Rutgers Env. Law Clinic, 46 A.3d 537 (N.J. 2012) and has written and presented nationally on the unique legal and political challenges of and interference with public law school clinical educational programs representing underserved communities, in The Rutgers Cases and the State of the Law of State Law School Clinical Programs, 65 Rutgers L. Rev. 817 (2013). He has also taught classroom courses including Administrative Law, Constitutional Law (req'd/1L), Civil Rights Law, Poverty Law, and Social Security Law and seminars in Welfare Law and World Hunger and International Law.   

In 2019, the Rutgers University Board of Governors (BOG) bestowed one of its highest honors on Professor Dubin, designating him a BOG Distinguished Service Professor. This "university honor recognizes sustained and exceptional service of faculty members who, after having reached full professorial status, demonstrate service above and beyond what is expected and who have made a recognized exceptional impact bringing acclaim to them, the university, the broader community, the academic community, state or nation." At the time Professor Dubin was one of only fourteen Rutgers Professors to ever receive this distinction, the third from the law school, and the first from the law school in the preceding fifteen years. He is the first Rutgers law professor to receive both this relatively rare University Distinguished Service designation and also the more common traditional distinction and promotion in rank (Prof. II) beyond tenured full professor and focused principally on scholarly accomplishments. He is also the first tenured law professor hired with year-round clinical case-handling and client-service responsibilities to receive either distinction designation.