Emily Ryo

Emily Ryo is an associate professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She received a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University. Immediately prior to joining USC, she was a research fellow at Stanford Law School. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and practiced law at the international law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, and Hamilton. Her research focuses on immigration, criminal justice, and legal noncompliance.  She is currently working on a study of long-term immigration detention in the United States; the first publication from this work examines immigration bond hearings, “Detained: A Study of Immigration Bond Hearings” (Law & Society Review). Her publications on unauthorized migration include “Less Enforcement, More Compliance: Rethinking Unauthorized Migration” (UCLA Law Review), “Deciding to Cross: The Norms and Economics of Unauthorized Migration” (American Sociological Review), and “Through the Back Door: Applying Theories of Legal Compliance to Illegal Immigration During the Chinese Exclusion Era” (Law & Social Inquiry).