Faculty Profile: Charles Pazar

Charles Pazar was born in the Bronx, New York.  He grew up in suburban New Jersey, and attended Boston University where he graduated magna cum laude with Distinction in Political Science in 1974.  He graduated from Rutgers University School of Law-Newark, in 1977.  After clerking in the Superior Court of New Jersey, he and his wife Janice moved to the Washington, DC area.

He has taught Immigration Law at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law since 2009.  The students at the University of Memphis invited him to be their commencement speaker in 2017.  He previously taught Immigration Law and Appellate Advocacy at the University of Mississippi School of Law.  He is admitted to the New Jersey, Virginia and District of Columbia bars and had served in several Department of Justice divisions before being appointed as the first Immigration Judge in Memphis in 1998.

Judge Pazar has spoken at CLE presentations of the Federal Bar Association, Tennessee Bar Association, and the Memphis Bar Association.  He has also written articles for various publications on Immigration Law and Procedure, and served as a judge on a number of Moot Court competitions.

Judge Pazar is married to Dr. Janice Pond Pazar, who serves as a psychologist at the West Clinic.  They have two children, Sarah and Elizabeth.  He is active in his church and his hobbies include genealogy, photography, traveling around Europe looking for the graves of ancestors, and reading murder mysteries.