Harvard Law School Holds Conference To Promote Child Advocacy Across Disciplines

The Harvard Law School Child Advocacy Program (CAP) held its inaugural conference this weekend to address the legal problems that children face.

The conference, which was co-sponsored by the American Bar Association, featured speakers from New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s office, the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, and various law schools from across the country.

The conference was intended to shed light on children’s issues, which is one of the most underserved areas of the law, according to Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law Elizabeth Bartholet, who is the director of CAP.

“That’s a large part of why we decided to do this conference,” Bartholet said. “We want to get the word out that we’re trying.”

Judith S. Kaye, chief judge of New York, delivered the keynote address on the importance of the next generation of child advocates.

She said in an interview that the conference would provide an opportunity for experts in different fields to collaborate on these issues.

“In the area of child advocacy, one of the important things we’ve learned is that you have to work across disciplines,” she said, adding that this was the first time she could recall that the American Bar Association co-sponsored a conference on a law school campus.

“You can’t make these little cubicles of problems,” she added.

In addition to the speeches, the conference featured a series of workshops that ranged from “Medical-Legal Partnerships in Child Welfare” to “The Other Elians: Toward Redressing the Plight of Unaccompanied Refugee and Immigrant Children.”