Jay W. Stansell

Jay W. Stansell is an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Seattle, Washington, and a 1988 graduate of the University of Washington School of Law. During the past seven years, he has represented over 1000 non-citizens, including many Cambodian Americans, facing indefinite detention by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. During that litigation, Jay argued before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Kim Ho Ma, resulting in the decision in Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001), in which the Supreme Court held that the INS could not indefinitely detain non-citizens who have been ordered deported and who cannot be returned to their countries of origin. Since the signing of a repatriation agreement with Cambodia, Jay has been active in advocacy surrounding the deportation of refugees back to Cambodia. He and his wife, Dori Cahn, are authors of a chapter in the book Race, Culture, Psychology and Law, dealing with the Cambodian deportations. They have traveled frequently to Cambodia with their two sons, and the family recently returned from a seven month stay, during which Jay taught International Human Rights Law at the Royal University of Law and Economics in Phnom Penh.