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Jennifer Safstrom

Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law

Jennifer Safstrom teaches the Stanton Foundation First Amendment Clinic. Before joining Vanderbilt's law faculty as a visiting assistant clinical professor of law, Professor Safstrom was the Dunn Legal Fellow at the ACLU of Virginia, where she litigated in federal and state court. Following her fellowship, she served as counsel to the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law Center, where she also served as supervising attorney and clinical teaching fellow in the Civil Rights Clinic. She has published and presented on civil rights topics, including First Amendment issues.

Safstrom earned her J.D. at Georgetown University Law Center and her B.A. at the University of Miami in 2011. Her legal scholarship has been published in the Georgetown Law Journal, the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, the Harvard Latinx Law Review, the Barry Law Review, the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal and Loyola University Chicago’s Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences, among other journals. She is admitted to the bar in Virginia, Florida and the District of Columbia.

Research Interests

First Amendment law, civil rights


Representative Publications

  • "Thirteenth Amendment Litigation in the Immigration Detention Context," 26 Michigan Journal of Race and Law 205 (2020)
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  • "The Health and Legal Implications of Early Screening for Developmental Disabilities for Youth & Justice-Involved Populations," 29 Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences 153 (2020) (with Jacqueline Safstrom)  
  •  "Analysis of the Applications and Implications of Chevron Deference in Immigration," 34 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 53 (2019)
  • "Weathering the Storm: Utilizing Congressional Investigations to Improve National Hurricane Preparedness," 22 Harvard Latinx Law Review 37 (2019)
  • "Salary History and Pay Parity: Assessing Prior Salary History as a 'Factor Other Than Sex' in Equal Pay Act Litigation," 31 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 135 (2019)
  • "States a Civil Rights Actors: Assessing Advocacy Mechanisms within a State's Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches," 24 Barry Law Review 53 (2019)
  • "An Analysis of Sanctuary Campuses: Assessing the Legality and Effectiveness of Policies Protective of Undocumented Students and of Potential Government Responses," 106 Georgetown Law Journal 1523 (2018)