By Jasmine Martinez, CFCC Student Fellow, Fall 2020 Maryland is one of several states that utilize drug treatment courts to assist those who are recovering from addiction. Drug treatment courts in the criminal context allow defendants to have a voice in their recovery plan and the power to control their lives. Rather than sentence…
By Neha Khan, CFCC Student Fellow, Fall 2020 The last week of September was the orientation for the majority of the Baltimore City schools participating in the Truancy Court Program (TCP) operated by the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts (CFCC) at the University of Baltimore School of Law. As…
By Zoe James-Collins, CFCC Student Fellow, Fall 2020 The ability to feel the emotional weight of another person is a powerful—and often overwhelming—sensation. Learning how to transcend empathy from sensation alone into a useful social tool is imperative to optimizing relationships both within and without the legal profession. While many lawyers harbor a natural gift…
By David Ascencio Arevalo, CFCC Student Fellow, Fall 2020 The United States of America is a nation of immigrants. For many people, the American dream is to come to this country to work and have a better life for themselves and their children. When immigrants decide to come to the United States, either with documentation…
By Jillianne Trotter Crescenzi, CFCC Student Fellow, Fall 2020 When people think about lawyers and the criminal justice system, they often think about catch phrases like “Law and Order” and “You must be good at arguing.” Our paternalistic society has been groomed to interpret law through a “right” and “wrong” lens, with nothing in between,…
By Guest Author Matthew J. Sullivan Unified Family Courts Connection | Fall 2020 The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic—which engulfed the entire world like a brushfire out of control—has changed the practices of fam- ily courts and all the judges, attorneys and practitioners who help families traverse the court system. I work with parents in high-conflict, shared-parenting…
By Guest Authors Leslie Starr Heimov and Susan Abrams Unified Family Court Connection | Fall 2020 While the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has brought much of the world to a halt, child welfare professionals and juvenile courts around the country have struggled to balance the critical need to function with the risks of the virus.…
By Guest Author Ramona A. Gonzalez Unified Family Court Connection | Fall 2020 The courts in the United States were forced to close their doors this year for all but emergency cases as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spread across the nation with more than six million confirmed cases and over 184,000 deaths by September 1, 2020.¹…
By Guest Author Annette Burns Unified Family Court Connection | Fall 2020 Little did family law attorneys know earlier this year that their counsel tables would be reduced to a 14-inch screen on a dining room table and everything about the practice of law would be reexamined, and altered to keep everyone healthy in the…