Abi Hassen

Visiting Assistant Professor of Law

Abi Hassen has an extensive background in criminal defense, social movements, protest law, and organized labor. Professor Hassen’s scholarship uses political philosophy as a tool for interrogating institutional, constitutional, and ideological dynamics within legal-social systems. His teaching interests reflect his background in civil liberties, criminal law, technology, and philosophy. Professor Hassen’s courses at Dickinson Law include Race, Law, and Technology, Professional Responsibility, Law in Emergency, and Advocacy I.

Abi comes to Penn State Dickinson Law with over a decade of diverse experience as an attorney, organizer, and educator. He is a partner and co-founder of O’Neill and Hassen, a small practice focused on indigent federal criminal defense. He is also a co-founder Black Movement-Law Project, a non-profit dedicated to rapid response legal support. Prior to that, he was the Mass Defense Coordinator with the National Lawyers Guild, and an organizer with UNITE HERE, where he worked at the forefront of civil liberties/protest legal support and labor organizing. Throughout his professional career, Abi has been dedicated to educating lawyers, union members, and protesters on a broad variety of topics including digital surveillance, constitutional rights/police encounters, and civil disobedience.

Professor Hassen’s scholarship is based on the experiences and problems he has encountered throughout his career and uses a variety of methods to develop innovative, yet pragmatic interpretations and interventions. He is particularly interested in the ways law is used to promote and/or inhibit institutional reproduction of discriminatory, racist, and authoritarian practices. His current research includes projects that use political philosophy and historical analysis to investigate the criminal system’s influence on the rule of law, as well as another project exploring the changing constitutional understanding of the criminal jury from the perspective of democratic theory.

Professor Hassen is an experienced public speaker and popular educator — he has given lectures, CLEs, and conducted training sessions at academic conferences, law schools, universities, in church basements, and the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Professor Hassen holds an M.A. in Political Philosophy from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, (Catalonia) Spain, a J.D. from NYU School of Law, and a B.S. (Emph., Computer Science) from The Evergreen State College.