Education

• Ohio State University B.A. 1993
• Ohio State University J.D. 1996
• University of Wisconsin-Madison Ph.D. 2001

Courses

• Property
• The Legal Profession
• Immigration Law
• Comparative Legal Systems

Background

• Elected to the American Law Institute, December 2019
• Appointed Milt and Judi Stewart Professor of Law, October 2017
• Director, IU Maurer School of Law Milt and Judi Stewart Center on the Global Legal Profession (2014– )
• Co-director, IU Maurer School of Law Center for Law, Society, and Culture (2011– 2014)
• Project Director (2010–2014) of Ford Foundation-funded study to examine the functioning of the lower courts in India
• Recipient, IU Black Law Students Association’s Most Outstanding Interactive Professor Award, 2023
• Recipient, Leon Wallace Teaching Award (2025, 2015)
• Recipient, Indiana University Trustees' Teaching Award (2023, 2012)
• William Mitchell College of Law: Professor of Law 2006–2009; Associate Professor of Law, 2004–2006; Assistant Professor of Law, 2001–2004
• Awarded "Teacher of the Year" for the 2003–2004 Academic Year at William Mitchell College of Law

Biography

Jayanth Krishnan is the Milt and Judi Stewart Professor of Law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law and the director of the Milt and Judi Stewart Center on the Global Legal Profession. He teaches courses on property, the legal profession/legal ethics, immigration, and comparative law. Krishnan has been the recipient of several teaching awards, including the Law School's highest teaching honor, the Leon Wallace Teaching Award (2025, 2015), the Indiana University Trustees' Teaching Award (2023, 2012), and the IU Black Law Students Association’s Most Outstanding Interactive Professor Award (2023). He was named director of Indiana Law's Stewart Center on the Global Legal Profession in 2014.

Krishnan is a socio-legal researcher who focuses on the legal profession, immigration, law and globalization, access to justice, and legal education. Much of his work has examined how these areas intersect in the U.S. and in India, but he has also written on the ways these issues operate in places such as Anglophonic Africa, Brazil, the Middle East, and other parts of Asia. His work has appeared in both highly reputed law reviews and peer-reviewed journals and in academic press books.

As director of the Stewart Center, Krishnan has led a range of research, pedagogical, service, and public events initiatives. The Center’s website has a detailed archive describing all the work that has transpired during his tenure as director. 

Krishnan was also co-director of the Law School's Center for Law, Society & Culture from 2011–2014. In October 2017 he was named the Milt and Judi Stewart Professor of Law.

In addition to having a law degree from Ohio State University, Krishnan holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to coming to Bloomington, Krishnan was a Professor of Law at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he received the Teacher of the Year award for the 2003–2004 academic year. He has also served as a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Iowa's College of Law, as the British Academy Visiting Professor at the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and as a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University's College of Law.

Selected works

• Venue by Zoom: Embracing an Immigrant Choice Model of Litigation, UC DAVIS LAW REVIEW (forthcoming 2026)
• The 14th Circuit, 102 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW (forthcoming 2025)
• The Costs of the Vexatious Lawyer: Who Bears Responsibility? 52 FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW (forthcoming 2025) 
• Misery, Melancholy, and Misfortune: A Migrant Case Study, 41 WISCONSIN INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL 367-409 (2024)
• Big Law's Immigration Advocates, Vol. 2024 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW 101-162 (2024) (with Megan Riley and Vitor M. Dias)
• Facts versus Discretion: The Debate over Immigration Adjudication, 37 GEORGETOWN IMMIGRATION LAW JOURNAL 1-28 (2022)
• Overstepping: U.S. Immigration Judges and the Power to Develop the Record, Vol. 2022 WISCONSIN LAW REVIEW 57 (2022)
• The Immigrant Struggle for Effective Counsel: An Empirical Assessment, Vol. 2022 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW 101 (2022).
• The 'Impractical and Anomalous' Consequences of Territorial Inequity, 36 GEORGETOWN IMMIGRATION LAW JOURNAL 621 (2022).
• The Evolution of Pro Bono Legal Services in Nigeria, in GLOBAL PRO BONO (eds., Scott Cummings, Fabio C.M. de S E Silva, & Louise Trubek, Cambridge University Press 2022) (with K. Ajagbe).
• A Pioneer of the Law & Society Movement: One Eyewitness's Reflections, 88 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW REVIEW 1715 (2021).
• Lawyers for the Undocumented: Addressing a Split Circuit Dilemma for Asylum-Seekers, 82 OHIO STATE LAW JOURNAL 163-200 (2021).
  
• Judicial Power—Immigration Style, 73 ADMINISTRATIVE LAW REVIEW (2021).
• Bhopal in the Federal Courts: How Indian Victims Failed to Get Justice in the United States, 72 RUTGERS UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW 101 (2020).
• International Lawyers As Disrupters of Corruption: Globalizing Influences and Lessons from Africa’s Most Populous Country – Nigeria,18NORTHWESTERN JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 93 (2020).
• THE STORY OF THE DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CENTRE COURTS: A RETROSPECTIVE (monograph, Motivate Publishing House, 2018).
• Legal Activism in the Face of Political Challenges: The Nigerian Case 42 JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 197-240 (2018) (with K. Ajagbe).
• Being Your Own Boss: The Career Trajectories and Motivations of India's Newest Corporate Lawyers, in The Indian Legal Profession in the Age of Globalization (eds., David B. Wilkins, Vikramaditya Khanna, & David Trubek, Cambridge University Press 2017) (with P.W. Thomas).
• External Forces, Internal Dynamics: Foreign Legal Actors and Their Impact on Domestic Affairs, 94 TEXAS LAW REVIEW (2016) 995-1022 (with V.M. Dias and M. Hevia).
• Legal Elites and the Shaping of Corporate Law Practice in Brazil: A Historical Study, 41 LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY 346-370 (2016) (with V.M. Dias and J.E. Pence).
• Surveying Key Aspects of Socio-Legal Scholarship in India: An Overview, 11 ANNUAL REVIEW OF LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 337-352 (2015) (with P.W. Thomas).
• The Aspiring and Globalizing Graduate Law Student: A Comment on the Lazarus-Black and Globokar LL.M. Study, 22 INDIANA JOURNAL OF GLOBAL LEGAL STUDIES 81-93 (2015) (with V.M. Davis).
• A Common Law Court in an Uncommon Environment: The DIFC Judiciary and Global Commercial Dispute Resolution, 25 AMERICAN REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 497-534 (2014) (with P. Purohit).
• Grappling at the Grassroots: Access to Justice in India's Lower Tier 27 HARVARD HUMAN RIGHTS JOURNAL 151-189 (2014) with S. Kavadi, A. Girach, D. Khupkar, K. Kokal, S. Mazumdar, Nupur, G. Panday, A. Sen, A. Sodhi, and B.T. Shukla).
• Legitimacy of Courts and the Dilemma of Their Proliferation: The Significance of Judicial Power in India, in ASIAN COURTS IN COMPARATIVE CONTEXTS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY (eds., Jiunn-rung Yeh et al, Cambridge University Press, 2014).
• Peel-Off Lawyers: Legal Professionals in India's Corporate Law Firm Sector, 9 SOCIO-LEGAL REVIEW 1-59 (2013).
• Exceptional or Not? An Examination of India's Special Courts in the National Security Context (with V. Sharma) in GUANTANAMO AND BEYOND: EXCEPTIONAL COURTS AND MILITARY COMMISSIONS IN COMPARATIVE AND POLICY PERSPECTIVE (eds., O. Gross and F. Ni Aolain, Cambridge University Press 2013).
• Academic SAILERS: The Ford Foundation and the Efforts to Shape Legal Education in Africa, 1957-1977, 52 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL HISTORY 261 (2012).
• Delay in Process, Denial of Justice: The Jurisprudence & Empirics of Speedy Trials in Comparative Perspective (with C. Raj Kumar), 42 GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 747-784 (2011).
• Hinduism and Law (co-edited with T. Lubin and D.R. Davis), CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (2010).
• The Joint Venture Law Firm: A Pilot Study, 28 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 431-460 (2010).
• Globetrotting Law Firms, 23 GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LEGAL ETHICS 57-99 (2010).
• Toward the Next Generation of Galanter-Influenced Scholars: The Reach of a Law-and-Society Founder, 71 LAW & CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS (Symposium Introduction) (2008) (with S. Macaulay).
• Scholarly Discourse, Public Perceptions, and the Cementing of Norms: The Case of the Indian Supreme Court and a Plea for Research, 29 JOURNAL OF APPELLATE PRACTICE & PROCESS 255-290 (2007).
• Outsourcing and the Globalizing Legal Profession, 48 WILLIAM & MARY LAW REVIEW 2189-2246 (2007).
• Analyzing the Friedman Thesis through a Legal Lens, 81 TULANE LAW REVIEW 923-954 (2007).
• Lawyering for a Cause and Experiences from Abroad, 94 CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW 575-615 (2006).
• More publications available on CV

Interests

• The Legal Profession
• Comparative law
• Immigration

Related links

• Social Science Research Network
• ORCID
• Publications

Areas of expertise

• Comparative law
• Immigration
• Legal profession