Beth Lyon joined the Villanova faculty in 2001, and is the Director of the Farmworker Legal Aid Clinic. Professor Lyon dedicates her scholarship, teaching and service to exploring the intersection of human rights and poverty alleviation. Her areas of expertise are immigration law and international economic, social and cultural rights. Professor Lyon’s scholarship includes various articles on U.S. asylum law and human rights law relating to poverty alleviation in the Americas. She is currently working on an article examining the international and comparative context of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding the right of undocumented immigrants to receive compensation for labor rights violations. While studying at the Georgetown University Law Center, Professor Lyon was the Managing Editor of Law and Policy in International Business journal. Professor Lyon also holds a Masters of Science from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Before joining the faculty, she was an attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and a Practitioner-in-Residence in the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the Washington College of Law, American University. She is a member of the New York and District of Columbia bar associations, and chaired the D.C. Bar Association Immigration and Human Rights Committee. She presents frequently on the topic of international human rights law and has run workshops at several conferences aimed at capacity building among clinical teachers in Central and Southeastern Europe.
Articles
The Unsigned United Nations Migrant Worker Rights Convention: an Overlooked Opportunity to Change the Brown Collar Migration Paradigm, New York University Journal of International Law and Policy (2009)
The United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and...
Changing Tactics: Globalization and the U.S. Immigrant Worker Rights Movement, UCLA Journal of International Law & Foreign Affairs (2008)
Tipping the Balance: Why Courts Should Look to International and Foreign Law on Unauthorized Immigrant Worker Rights, University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law (2007)
New International Human Rights Standards on Unauthorized Immigrant Worker Rights: Seizing an Opportunity to Pull Governments out of the Shadows, Villanova University Legal Working Paper Series (2006)
Governments cannot ignore international human rights standards for unauthorized migrant workers forever. This chapter presents...
Farm Workers in Illinois: Law Reforms and Opportunities for the Legal Academy to Protect Some of the State's Most Disadvantaged Workers, Southern Illinois University Law Journal (2005)
Book Chapters
From Sanctuary to Shaping International Law: How Unauthorized Immigrant Workers are Advocating Beyond U.S. Borders, BRINGING HUMAN RIGHTS HOME (2008)
Strategies for Raising Poverty in America as a Violation of International Human Rights Law, The Souls of Poor Folk (2007)
New International Standards on Unauthorized Immigrant Worker Rights: Seizing an Opportunity to Pull Governments out of the Shadows, Human Rights, Refugees and Displaced Persons in Process: Essays in Honour of Joan Fitzpatrick and Arthur Helton (2005)
Organization of American States (with S. Rottman), Manual of Human Rights Complaint Mechanisms Available to Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (2002)