Northern Illinois University
College of Law

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Dean Maddali teaches in the areas of immigration and constitutional law. 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, 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, Dean 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.

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.

| SSRN Author Page | HeinOnline Author Profile |

Articles

• Forgetting Its Common Humanity: America’s Immigration Story, 24 Brown J. World Aff.  2 (Spring/Summer 2018).
• Left Behind: The Dying Principle of Family Reunification Under Immigration Law, 50 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 1 (Fall 2016). (also available in SSRN)
• The Immigrant “Other”: Racialized Identity and the Devaluation of Immigrant Family Relations, 89 Ind. L.J. 2 (Spring 2014). (also available in SSRN)
  • cited in United States v. Aguilar, 133 F.Supp.3d 486 (E.D.N.Y. 2015).
• Padilla v. Kentucky:  A New Chapter in Supreme Court Jurisprudence on Whether Deportation Constitutes Punishment for Lawful Permanent Residents?, 61 Am. U. L. Rev. 1 (2011). (also available in SSRN)
  • cited in State v. Gaitan, 37 A.3d 1089 (N.J. 2012).

Other Writing

• J.C. Salyer, Court of Injustice: Law Without Recognition in U.S. Immigration, Rutgers Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books (Book Review) (Nov. 2021). 
• The RAISE Act Undermines American Values, Youth Circulations Blog, Aug. 21, 2017.
• Indifference to Refugees is Shameful, Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 2, 2015.
• A Primer for Governors: Legal and Humanitarian Repercussions of Shutting Borders to Syrian Refugees, Youth Circulations Blog, Nov. 18, 2015.
• Sophia’s Choice: Problems Faced By Female Asylum Seekers and Their U.S.-Citizen Children, 34 Feminist Stud. 277 (2008).

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