Rights of the accused (part two) − Trials and tribulations: ensuring access to justice in a trial process

Professor Jonathan Hafetz is an expert on constitutional law, national security, human rights, and international criminal law. He joined Seton Hall Law School in 2010. Professor Hafetz is the author of the books, Punishing Atrocities through a Fair Trial: International Criminal Law from Nuremberg to the Age of Global Terrorism (Cambridge Univ. Press 2018), and Habeas Corpus after 9/11: Confronting America’s New Global Detention System (NYU Press 2011), which received the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts, Honorable Mention, and the American Society of Legal Writers, Scribes Silver Medal Award. He is also the editor of Obama’s Guantanamo: Stories from an Enduring Prison (NYU Press 2016) and the co-editor (with Mark Denbeaux) of The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law (NYU Press 2009). Professor Hafetz’s scholarship has appeared in numerous publications. Professor Hafetz received a Fulbright Scholarship award for Japan in 2021-2022. From 2014-15, Professor Hafetz was a Visiting Research Scholar in the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Professor Hafetz is an internationally recognized constitutional and human rights lawyer. Prior to joining Seton Hall, he was a senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, a litigation director at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, and a John J. Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Law at Gibbons, P.C. From 2017-2020, Professor Hafetz was on leave from Seton Hall Law as a senior attorney at the ACLU. Professor Hafetz has represented prisoners in locations across the globe and litigated landmark cases challenging arbitrary detention, rendition, and torture. Professor Hafetz has testified before Congress, and frequently provides expert commentary for major media outlets and news programs. His op-eds have appeared in many publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Review, Slate, The Hill, The Nation, Politico, and The Guardian. He is a frequent blogger for Balkinization, Just Security, and other web sites. Professor Hafetz is the former chair of the New York City Bar Task Force on National Security and the Rule of Law. He has lectured widely both in the United States and abroad. In 2020, Professor Hafetz was named to the List of Experts for the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Professor Hafetz is the creator and editor of the podcast, Law on Film, which looks at law through film, and film through law (https://www.buzzsprout.com/2073468) Professor Hafetz earned his J.D. from Yale Law School. He holds an M. Phil in Modern History from Oxford University and a B.A. from Amherst College. Following law school, Professor Hafetz served as a law clerk to Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and Judge Sandra L. Lynch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Desi is currently a Partner at McCarter & English, LLP, in the firm’s Business Litigation group in Newark, New Jersey. She focuses her practice on government investigations and white-collar defense work, as well as general commercial litigation in both state and federal courts. Desi previously served in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey for nearly nine years. During that time, she served as First Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Division, among other supervisory positions. In these various roles, she oversaw every unit within the Office’s Criminal Division including Economic Crimes, Cyber Crime, National Security, Violent Crime, Health Care Fraud, and Organized Crime/Gangs. In July 2025, the United States District Judges for the District of New Jersey selected Desi to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Desi clerked for the Honorable Morten I. Greenberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as well as the Honorable Stuart J. Rabner, Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. She also spent two years as a litigation associate at McCarter & English. Desi earned her BA from the University of Maryland in 2009 and her JD from Seton Hall University School of Law in 2012.