Faculty and Administration Profiles

Sarah J. Diaz

About

Sarah J. Diaz is the Associate Director of the Center for the Human Rights of Children and Lecturer in the School of Law at Loyola University Chicago. Professor Diaz has worked at the intersection of child migration and human rights for fifteen years, working with NGOs on complex human rights, migration, and international criminal law issues.

Prior to joining Loyola, Professor Diaz served as the National Case Director for the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights at the University of Chicago Law School, where she facilitated the expansion of the Young Center’s work in importing the framework for the best interests of the child under international law into the U.S. immigration system. Professor Diaz spent seven years as a Clinical Instructor with the Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic at DePaul University College of Law. There, she created and taught two clinical programs: the Immigration Policy Advocacy Clinic and the Advanced Immigrant Detainee Clinic.

Throughout her career, Professor Diaz has participated in several initiatives designed to create access to human rights for children and migrants on a local, state, and international level including co-authoring the Illinois Voices Act, serving on the Illinois Human Trafficking Task Force and helping to develop and co-lead a DACA legal services collaborative that directed policy feedback for the Obama Administration. Professor Diaz was recently asked to offer her expert opinion on the use of private security firms for migrant child detention to the U.N. Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries. She was recently awarded the Charles Cheney Hide Award in Public International Law for her article Parent-Child Border Separations Violate International Law: Why it Matters and What Can Be Done to Protect Children and Families.

Degrees

BS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
JD, DePaul University College of Law
LLM, Northwestern University School of Law

Program Areas

Asylum & Immigration Law, International Human Rights Law, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law

Courses Taught

Immigration Detention Project
Immigration Practicum
Immigration Law
International Human Rights

Selected Publications

Sarah J. Diaz. Hague Abduction Considerations for the Hague Adoption Lawyer, in The International Adoption Sourcebook, (AILA 2 Ed. 20201)  

Diaz, S. & Schrobilgen, M. The Role of Public Health in the Rule of Law: The Cautionary Tale of Title 42 Expulsions. Harvard Public Health Review. 2021; 30. 

Sarah J. Diaz, Hague Abduction Law for the Contemporary Immigrant Parent and Child, 2 AILA L.J. 107 (2020).

Diaz, S. & Schrobilgen, M. 2020 “COVID-19’s Nefarious Toll on Migrant Children: Executive Overreach and a Framework to Prevent Abuse”, published in the online symposium Children's Rights in the Time of COVID-19, Center for the Human Rights of Children, Loyola University School of Law, November 17, 2020. 

An Elusive Mandate: Enforcing the Prohibition on the Use of Child Soldiers, 39 CHILD. LEGAL RTS. J. 263 (2019).

Failing the Refugee Child: Gaps in the Refugee Convention Relating to Children, 20 GEO. J. GENDER & L. 605 (2019).

Parent-Child Border Separations Violate International Law: Why it matters and what can be done to protect children and families, GEO. HUM. RTS. INST., Perspectives in Human Rights No. 6 (Aug. 2018).

Unequal Protection: Disparate Treatment of Immigrant Crime Victims in Cook, the Collar Counties and Beyond, DePaul Asylum & Immigration Law Clinic, October 2014 (with clinic students G. Arruela, C. Perez, A. Valenzuela and K. Zurita).

Re-Interpreting Postville: A Legal Perspective, 2 DEPAUL J. SOC.JUST.31 (2008) (with S. Albiol and R. L. Chan)