Faculty & Adjuncts

Professor McCormick joined the faculty at TU College of Law in 2005, where she founded and continues to direct the Immigrant Rights Project, a law school clinical education program in which law students represent clients in immigration matters. Since 2008, McCormick has served as Director of Clinical Education Programs at the College of Law and, in 2015, Professor McCormick was appointed Associate Dean for Experiential Learning. In addition to teaching students in the Immigrant Rights Project Clinical Program, McCormick also teaches Immigration Law and International Refugee and Asylum Law.

McCormick’s scholarship and advocacy focus on immigration law and policy, in particular the intersection of federal immigration law and policy and state and local immigration enforcement efforts. In her most recent article in the Lewis & Clark Law Review, McCormick examines the twenty year history of two federal “anti-sanctuary” laws, the ways in which state and federal courts have understood their meaning and purpose, and the evolving role of the statutes in the national immigration debate, in particular the struggle to define the proper role for state and local governments in immigration enforcement. In her 2012 article in the Stanford Law and Policy Review, which draws heavily on her own experiences with students and clients in the Tulsa community, McCormick examines the detrimental impact of local anti-immigrant bias on the implementation of a federal immigration benefit designed to protect immigrant victims of violent crime, and proposes regulatory reforms to ensure protection for these victims. McCormick’s scholarship has also explored the history of immigration to and immigrant life in Oklahoma, and the reaction of state legislators, law enforcement agencies, and residents to recent and dramatic shifts in the state’s immigrant population. In a 2009 article in the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, McCormick examined the history and the impact of the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act (HB 1804), Oklahoma’s comprehensive experiment in immigration regulation, and considered how it is that Oklahoma found itself on the front lines of the illegal immigration debate. In 2007, she received the Josephine Yalch Zekan Award for Best Scholarly Article in Faith and Law for her article Hospitality: How a Biblical Virtue Could Transform United States Immigration Policy.

Before joining the faculty at TU, McCormick was a member of the clinical faculty at Cornell Law School and the University of Connecticut School of Law. While at the University of Connecticut, McCormick co-founded and taught in the Asylum & Human Rights Clinic. She holds a BA from Fordham University, an MA from New York University, and a JD from Georgetown Law Center, where she served as a senior editor of the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal. She is admitted to practice in Oklahoma, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

Law Reviews

• Understanding “Sanctuary Cities”, (2017).

• Federal Anti-Sanctuary Law: A Failed Approach to Immigration Enforcement and a Poor Substitute for Real Reform, 20 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 165 (2016).

• Rethinking Indirect Victim Eligibility for U Visas To Better Protect Immigrant Families and Communities, 22 Stan. L. & Pol’y Rev. 587 (2011).

• The Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act: Blowing off Steam or Setting Wildfires? , 23 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 293 (2009).

• Hospitality: How a Biblical Virtue Could Transform United States Immigration Policy, (with Patrick McCormick) 83 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 857 (2006).

• Elizabeth McCormick, David Cole, Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (2003), (book review) 19 Conn. J. Int’l L. 423 (2004).

• Elizabeth McCormick, HIV-Infected Haitian Refugees: An Argument Against Exclusion, 7 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 149 (1993).

• Elizabeth McCormick, Detaining to Deter: An Unworkable and Unlawful Response to Families Seeking Asylum at the U.S. Border.

• Elizabeth McCormick, The Meaning of Federal Anti-Sanctuary Provisions in an Era of Immigration Enforcement Discretion.

Book Chapters

• Oklahoma, in Contemporary Immigration in America: A State-by-State Encyclopedia (Kathleen R. Arnold ed., 2015).

• Immigration Rights Project Project
• Advanced Immigration Rights Project

• Pro Bono Asylum Project, International Institute of Connecticut
• AIDS Legal Network for Connecticut
• Connecticut Bar Association, Law Works for People
• Connecticut Bar Association
• Tulsa Institute for Trauma Abuse and Neglect
• National Taskforce to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, VAWA IV Immigration Committee
• Association of American Law Schools
• Clinical Legal Education Association
• Oklahoma Bar Association
• American Immigration Lawyers’ Association
• National Lawyers’ Guild, National Immigration Project
• Tulsa County Bar Association
• American Bar Association
• Resource Education for Calming Energizing Self-Awareness & Self Regulation
• Oklahoma Center for Community and Justice
• Oklahoma Human Trafficking Task Force

• Josephine Yalch Zekan Award, Best Scholarly Article in Faith and Law
• Fordham College Dean’s Scholar
• Fordham College Honors Program
• Grant Awards to Support and Enhance Services of Immigrant Rights Project
• Outstanding Teaching Award
• Fern Holland Courageous Lawyer Award
• Grant Award for Particiption in the Center for International Education Exchange International Faculty Development Seminar
• Medicine Wheel Award
• Outstanding Teacher Award