Martin Guggenheim, Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Clinical Law at NYU School of Law, will be honored by the American Bar Association Center for Children and the Law with its Mark Hardin Award for Child Welfare Legal Scholarship and Systems Change during a ceremony April 7 at the center’s National Parent Representation Conference in Tysons Corner, Virginia.
Guggenheim, who is retiring after 49 years, co-teaches the Family Defense Clinic.
A well-known scholar in the area of children and the law, he is the co-chair of the ABA National Alliance for Parent Representation Steering Committee and has been the inspiration for the Parent Representation Movement.
His scholarship stresses that child advocates must also be family advocates, and that sustainable child welfare reform requires a deep and abiding commitment to strengthening and honoring families.
The award is named for the longtime director of child welfare at the Center on Children and the Law in honor of his history as an early innovator in that field. The award is given to an attorney, law professor, judge or legislator who has shown achievement and commitment to legal scholarship and systems change, such as authoring child welfare legislation, leading a child welfare agency through major system change or having a key role in litigation that resulted in major system change.
The ABA Center for Children and the Law advances access to justice for children and families and improves children’s lives through advances in law, justice, knowledge, practice and public policy by focusing on child abuse and neglect, legal representation, child welfare and protective services system enhancement, family preservation, adolescent health and other child protective legal issues.
