Shefali Milczarek-Desai
Shefali Milczarek-Desai is Associate Professor of Law and Co-Chair of the Bacon Immigration Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law. She has received the College of Law’s Distinguished Public Service Scholar Award, has been recognized as a Feerick Center Social Justice Leader, and is a Fellow with the Sustainable Economies Law Center.
Professor Desai teaches employment and labor law courses, torts, and seminars on issues in worker rights law. Her scholarship employs critical legal frameworks to analyze the worker rights paradigm and worker justice for people engaged in precarious work. She has written on topics such as migrant child labor, access to paid sick leave, long-term care, and worker-owned cooperatives. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the California Law Review, Texas A&M Law Review, Columbia Human Rights Law Review, UCLA Women’s Law Journal, Arizona State Law Journal, Temple Law Review, Arkansas Law Review, and Journal of Tort Law, among others. Professor Desai also engages in creative projects such as the award-winning documentary film, Soledad, which is based on her representation of a young woman seeking asylum in the United States.
Professor Desai speaks on work law issues both nationally and internationally and regularly presents at conferences and workshops around the country and the world. She has presented her scholarship at the Marco Biagi Centre for International and Comparative Studies in Italy, the Diplomatic Academy of México in Cuidad de México, Mexican Consulates in the United States, the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School in New York City, the Colloquium on Scholarship in Employment and Labor Law (COSELL), the Law & Society Association (LSA), the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), the American Public Health Association (APHA), the American Society on Aging (ASA), the Wisconsin International Law Journal, the State Bar of Arizona, and the Arizona Women Lawyers Association, among others.
Previously, Professor Desai directed the Workers’ Rights Clinic and instructed students in client-centered and cross-cultural lawyering through representation of low-wage workers throughout Arizona’s borderlands. She and her students worked on cases resulting in published decisions in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Arizona District Court. Professor Desai also has designed, launched and taught in-person and online courses in the College of Law’s undergraduate law, master’s in legal studies, and foreign diplomat training programs.
Prior to entering the academy, Professor Desai spent many years practicing law. She assisted in litigating Flores v. Arizona, a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning the rights of English Language Learners in Arizona public schools, was elected shareholder at the DeConcini McDonald law firm, and before that clerked for Vice-Chief Justice Ruth V. McGregor at the Arizona Supreme Court. She has been selected as an Alternate Fulbright Award Winner, Rhodes Scholarship Finalist, a Notre Dame Law School Feminist Jurisprudence Award Winner, and has written creative non-fiction essays as well as a book manuscript selected as a finalist in an international competition. Her favorite pastimes include hiking, cooking, and being with her family.
Representative Publications
- (Hidden) In Plain Sight: Migrant Child Labor and the New Economy of Exploitation, 77 Arkansas Law Review 345 (Summer 2024)
- Disentangling Immigration Policy from Tort Claims for Future Lost Wages, 16 Journal of Tort Law 255, (Winter 2024)
- Cited in The Restatement of the Law (Third): Remedies, American Law Institute (forthcoming)
- Opening the Pandemic Portal to Re-Imagine Paid Sick Leave for Immigrant Workers, 111 California Law Review 1171, (Fall 2023)
- Recognized and selected as “one of the best works of recent scholarship relating to Health Law” and peer reviewed by Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), November 11, 2022 (text)
- Immigrant Workers’ Voices as Catalysts for Reform in the Long-Term Care Industry, 55 (3) Arizona State Law Journal 891 (Fall 2023) (co-author, with Tara Sklar)
- Based on original, qualitative research by the authors featured in the University of Arizona Hispanic Serving Institute Newsletter (text).
- Aquí Entre Nos (Just Between Us): Engagement of hotel housekeepers during sociopolitical and environmental change, Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, Johns Hopkins University Press (forthcoming Fall 2023) (co-author, with Samantha Sabo, Dulce Jimenez, Alexandra Samarron, Omar Gomez, Melissa Liebert, Jill Guernsey De Zapien, Miriam Cuautle, Sara Shuman)
- The Los Angeles Times, “The U.S. needs paid sick leave. Here’s how to get it right,” May 24, 2022 (op-ed)
- OSHA has long failed vulnerable workers, Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2022
- The Return of Typhoid Mary? Immigrant Workers in Nursing Homes, Journal of Elder Policy (Fall 2021) (co-author with Professor Tara Sklar)
- Why nursing home aides exposed to Covid-19 aren't taking sick leave, The Conversation, November 23, 2020 (co-author with Professor Tara Sklar)
- America's immigrant workers left extremely vulnerable, Arizona Daily Star, May 24, 2020
- Soledad: A Documentary Film (2019) (written and co-produced) (directed by Lisa Molomot) (more info available at https://spark.adobe.com/page/ZWVxw5bNXFd5C/)
- Constitutional Cities: Sanctuary Jurisdictions, Local Voice, and Individual Liberty, 50 Colum. Hum. Rts. Rev. 1 (2018) (co-author with Toni Massaro)
- Constitutional Cities, Ms. Magazine Blog, (Aug. 25, 2017)
- (Re)Locating Other/Third World Women: An Alternative Approach to Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez's Construction of Gender, Culture and Identity, 13 UCLA Women's L.J. 235 (2004)
- Hearing Afghan Women's Voices: Feminist Theory’s Re-Conceptualization of Women's Human Rights, 16 Ariz. J. Int'l & Comp. L. 805 (1999)
- Complete List of Publications
Education
- J.D. James E. Rogers College of Law
2001, cum laude - M.A University of Arizona Women's Studies
2001 - Created and was first graduate of JD/MA Women’s Studies joint-degree program - B.A. Whittier College
1997, summa cum laude
Work Experience
- Associate Professor of Law
James E. Rogers College of Law
2023 - present - Director, Workers' Rights Clinic
James E. Rogers College of Law
2018 - 2023 - Co-Director, Immigrant Justice Clinic
James E. Rogers College of Law
2019 - 2020 - Attorney, Speaker, Author
Employment Law, Immigration and Asylum Law, Tucson, Arizona
2010 - present - Attorney
Arizona Risk Retention Trust, Tucson, Arizona
2008 - 2009 - Attorney
DeConcini McDonald Yetwin & Lacy PC, Tucson, Arizona
2002 - 2008 - Law Clerk
Hon. Ruth V. McGregor, Arizona Supreme Court, Phoenix, Arizona
2001 - 2002