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Weyrauch Distinguished Lecture in Family Law to be delivered by GWU family law professor and author

by Scott Emerson
Senior Writer

Professor Naomi Cahn, a family law professor at The George Washington University Law School, will deliver the University of Florida Levin College of Law Weyrauch Distinguished Lecture in Family Law on March 23 at noon. The free lecture titled “Family Classes” is being held in Holland Hall 180.

“I’m honored to be selected to give this year’s Weyrauch Lecture” said Professor Cahn. “Professor Weyrauch was a distinguished teacher, scholar and intellectual role model in numerous fields, and his work in family law has inspired the topic of my lecture.”

Professor Cahn is the John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at The George Washington University School of Law. She is a senior fellow at the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and is a member of the Yale Cultural Cognition Project. Professor Cahn has written numerous law review articles on family law, and has co-authored several books. Her current projects include Test Tube Families: Why the Fertility Markets Need Legal Regulation (NYU Press, 2009) as well as book with Professor June Carbone, Red Families v. Blue Families (Oxford University Press, 2009). Prior to joining the faculty at GW in 1993, Cahn practiced with Hogan & Harston in Washington, D.C. and as staff attorney with Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services. She received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her B.A. from Princeton University.

Nancy Dowd, the UF Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law and co-director of the Center on Children and Families, said Cahn’s work in family law is amazing and that her lecture will reflect her scholarship.

“Her work touches on some of the hot button topics of family law today, and she provides a richly nuanced approach to difficult topics,” said Professor Dowd. “The topic of her talk is “Family Classes,” the ways in which families are not always treated equally by the law.”