Marc Falkoff
Visiting Professor of Law
Biography
Professor Falkoff’s research interests are in legal education and the practice of public interest law. He is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where he was articles editor for the Columbia Law Review and a contributor to the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. He holds an Ed.D. in Higher Education Administration from Northern Illinois University, with a dissertation that focused on how law schools could work with community colleges to develop pathways to legal careers for students from underrepresented populations. He also earned a Ph.D. in American Literature from Brandeis University.
From 2004 to 2024, Professor Falkoff represented fourteen prisoners being held by the U.S. military at Guantánamo Bay on suspicion of involvement with terrorism. The book of prisoner poetry he collected and edited―Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak― was a bestselling anthology that has been translated into a dozen languages. Professor Falkoff clerked for Judges Jack B. Weinstein of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and Carlos F. Lucero of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was appointed habeas corpus special master for the EDNY from 2003 to 2004. In 2009 he received the Northern Illinois University Foundation Award for Faculty Excellence.
Publications
Books and Chapters
- Reflections on Poems from Guantánamo, in Remaking the Exceptional: Tracing Torture, Justice, and Reparations (DePaul Art Museum, 2022).
- “Where is the World to Save Us from Torture?”: The Poets of Guantánamo, in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights (Routledge 2016).
- Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak (University of Iowa Press, 2007) (editor).
Articles
- Building Diversity Pathways from Community College to Law School (under review).
- Thoughts on American Legal Education: Past, Present and Future, 23 Chosun L. J. 3 (2016).
- An Empirical Critique of JCAR and the Legislative Veto in Illinois, 65 DePaul L. Rev. 949 (2016).
- The Legislative Veto in Illinois: Why JCAR Review of Agency Rulemaking is Unconstitutional, 47 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 1055 (2016).
- The Hidden Costs of Habeas Delay, 83 U. Colo. L. Rev. 339 (2012).
- Habeas, Informational Asymmetries, and the War on Terror, 41 Seton Hall L. Rev. 1361 (2011) (with Jon Connolly).
- Bagram, Boumediene, and Limited Government, 59 DePaul L. Rev. 851 (2010) (with Robert Knowles).
- Back to Basics: Habeas Corpus Procedures and Long-Term Executive Detention, 86 Denv. U. L. Rev. 961 (2009).
- Torture and Habeas Corpus as Information-Forcing Devices, 29 N. Ill. U. L. Rev. 425 (2009).
- This Is To Whom It May Concern: A Guantánamo Narrative, 1 DePaul J. Soc. Just. 153 (2008), reprinted in Guantánamo: Inside a Prison, Outside the Law ((NYU Press, 2009) and The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse (NYU Press, 2011).
- Conspiracy to Commit Poetry: Empathetic Lawyering at Guantánamo Bay, 6 Seattle J. Soc. Just. 3 (Fall/Winter 2007).
- Litigation and Delay at Guantánamo Bay, 10 N.Y. City L. Rev. 393 ( 2007).
- Toward a Limited-Government Theory of Extraterritorial Detention, 62 N.Y.U. Ann. Surv. Am. L. 637 (2007) (with Robert Knowles).
- Abrogating State Sovereign Immunity in Legislative Courts, 101 Colum. L. Rev. 853 (2001) (note).