James C. Hathaway, the James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law, is a leading authority on international refugee law whose work is regularly cited by the most senior courts of the common law world. He is the founding director of Michigan Law's Program in Refugee and Asylum Law and the Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Refugee Law at the University of Amsterdam.

In May 2018 he was a visiting professor at the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Law, Slovenia and taught an intensive course on the Convention refugee definition. He also delivered a public lecture on the need for a global system of refugee burden and responsibility sharing.