Biography

Professor Gupta serves as Professor of Law, Judge Chester J. Straub Scholar, Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic, and Associate Dean for Clinical Education at Rutgers Law School. Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty, Professor Gupta served as Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law. She also served as a Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Center for Applied Legal Studies at Georgetown Law and at the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall University School of Law, where she supervised students and represented clients in cases involving asylum, human trafficking, domestic violence, immigrant labor rights, and criminal immigration issues. Professor Gupta clerked for the Honorable Chester J. Straub of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Honorable Charles P. Sifton of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

The Immigrant Rights Clinic represents detained and non-detained immigrants seeking various forms of relief before immigration courts, the Department of Homeland Security, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the federal courts of appeals. Professor Gupta has authored numerous amicus briefs before the federal courts of appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. She also teaches non-clinical courses in refugee law and professional responsibility. Professor Gupta was twice elected to serve on the national board of the Clinical Legal Education Association (and she recently ended her term as Co-President of CLEA), and she has spoken at or organized numerous regional and national conferences in immigration law and clinical education. Her scholarship focuses on immigration and refugee law, with a particular focus on gender-based claims for relief, and has been published in various law reviews, including the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, the Michigan Law Review Online, the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, the Colorado Law Review, and the Indiana Law Journal. In 2017, Professor Gupta was awarded the Presidential Fellowship for Teaching Excellence in recognition of her teaching accomplishments at Rutgers.

Professor Gupta received her B.A. with high honors in psychology and women’s studies from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was an Equal Justice America Fellow, Director of the Temporary Restraining Order Project Domestic Violence Clinic, Director of the Rebellious Lawyering Conference, and an editorial board member of the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. She also worked at the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Publications

Dismantling the Wall,” 120 Mich. L. Rev. Online 1 (2022) (with Charles Shane Ellison).

Unwilling or Unable? The Failure to Conform the Nonstate Actor Standard in Asylum Claims to the Refugee Act,” 52 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 441 (2021) (with Charles Shane Ellison).

“Un(avail)Able Protection: The Shifting Legal Landscape in the Eighth Circuit and Beyond for Asylum Seekers Fleeing Nonstate Persecution,” 25 Bender’s Immigration Bulletin 1061 (July 15, 2020) (with Charles Shane Ellison).

"Immigration and Naturalization," in ABA Year in Review (contributing author with Samantha Rumsey) (Kevin J. Fandl, et al. eds) (American Bar Association, Summer 2018).

“Dead Silent: Heuristics, Silent Motives, and Asylum,” 48 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 1 (2016) (lead article) 

"Ethical Problems in the Practice of Law: Model Rules, State Variations, and Practice Questions" (Wolters Kluwer 2015-2016) (with Lisa G. Lerman and Philip G. Schrag)

“Nexus Redux,” 90 Ind. L.J.  465 (2015) (lead article)

“The New Nexus,” 85 Colo. L.Rev. 377 (2014)

“Detrimental Reliance on Detrimental Reliance: The Courts’ Conflicting Standards for the Retroactive Application of New Immigration Laws to Past Acts,” Rutgers L. Rev. Commentaries (2011)

“Doctrinal Mutilation: The Board of Immigration Appeals’ Flawed Analysis of the ‘Continuing Persecution’ Doctrine in Claims Based on Past Female Genital Mutilation,” 23 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 39 (2008)

“Abuse of (Plenary) Power? Judicial Deference and the Post-9/11 War on Immigrants,” in Awakening from the Dream: Civil Rights Under Siege and the New Struggle for Equal Justice (with Lori A. Nessel) (Denise C. Morgan, Rachel D. Godsil, and Joy Moses, eds.) (Carolina Academic Press, 2006)