Maria Hawilo

Maria Hawilo is Distinguished Professor in Residence, Loyola University Chicago School of Law. She formerly served as Clinical Assistant Professor of Law in the Bluhm Legal Clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Hawilo focuses her teaching and research on the criminal justice system and its vast overreach and disparate impact on African-American and Latino individuals. She also focuses on international law, particularly rule of law and trainings of institutional justice actors.

Hawilo has served as a supervising attorney for the District of Columbia’s Public Defender Service representing individuals charged with felony criminal offenses. She was a member of the Forensic Practice Group, a committee focused on the use of forensic science in the courtroom. She served as a law clerk for the Honorable David W. McKean, U.S District Court, Western District of Michigan.

Hawilo is the co-editor, with Premal Dharia and James Forman, Jr., of Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change, published in 2024.

Hawilo interviewed Emily Bazelon for FAN in 2019 about Bazelon’s book Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration.

Hawilo received a BS in biopsychology and neuroscience, cum laude, from the University of Michigan, and a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School.