Program on Children and the Law

Welcome to the Program on Children and the Law at the University of Michigan Law School. For more than 30 years, Michigan Law has been a leader in the development of the jurisprudence regarding children. In 1976, the Law School launched the Child Advocacy Law Clinic: the first clinical law program in America to specialize in problems of child abuse and neglect and children in foster care. Since then, Michigan Law has developed one of the most respected and influential child law programs in the country. Please explore our website. Whether you are a prospective student, researcher, policy maker, or practitioner in the field, we hope some of these resources are helpful to you. here

Recent Activities
The Children's Bureau, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded the University of Michigan Law School a five-year, $5 million dollar grant to serve as the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System.  Read the article in Ann Arbor.Com by clicking here.

• The Michigan Child Welfare Law Journal (Summer 2009), published five papers written by students in the Winter 2009 Johnson Workshop on Children and the Law.  You can access the Journal here.  The articles are:

• Comment on the Committee's Model Act Governing Representation of Children in Abuse and Neglect Proceedings by John Anzelc, Melissa Cohen, and Sarah Taylor
• Evaluating a Child's Decision-Making Competence in a Best Interests World: Infusing an Attorney's Intuition with Developmental Science by Sheba Rogers, William Wall, and Samuel Zun
• Remaining vs. Removal: Preventing Premature Removal when Poverty is Confused with Neglect by Erica Turcios
• Decision-Making Rights of Teen Parents by John Calvin, Manouchka Colon, and Kacey Houston
• Juvenile Life Without Parole: A Review of Relevant Scientific Evidence, Penological Theories, and Policy Interests by Daniel E. Choe, Liz Reynolds, and Jessica Stoll
  
• The Detroit Center for Family Advocacy profiled in Michigan Lawyer's Weekly.
• In October 2009, Professor Sankaran co-presented with Justice Maura Corrigan of the Michigan Supreme Court, and Nancy Colon, parent advocate at the Detroit Center for Family Advocacy, at the Third National Judicial Summit on the Protection of Children in Austin, Texas.  The panel focused on strengthening the representation of parents in child protection cases.
• Don Duquette spoke at the 17th National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect on April 2, 2009, on "Protecting Children and Protecting Liberty: Improving Decision-Making in Removing Children in Child Protective Services Cases."
• Don Duquette spoke on "Protecting our Children/Protecting Our Liberty: What We Can Learn From the Texas FLDS Children, Mike's Hard Lemonade case, and others" at the ABA National Conference on Children and the Law on May 14-16, 2009.  To view Don's PowerPoint presentation, click here. To view other material on this subject, click on Article 1 and Article 2. [If you are unable to open these links in your browser, right-click on the link and choose "Save Target As."] 
• Frank Vandervort presented in April "An Overview of Child Protection Proceedings" for the Infant Mental Health Specialists at the Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health's 31st Biennial Conference.

• On June 4th, Frank Vandervort co-presented with Dr. Kathleen Coulborn Faller "The Challenges of Collaboration Between Social Workers and Lawyers: When World Views Collide" at The University of Pennsylvania's Field Center for Children's Policy, Practice & Research, One Child, Many Hands Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.