Barbara A. Fedders

Areas of Expertise

• Criminal Justice Policy
• Criminal Justice Politics
• Juvenile Law
• Law and Society
• Public Interest Law

Biography

Barbara Fedders is an Associate Professor of Law. She is the Director of Clinical Programs and faculty supervisor of the Youth Justice Clinic, in which her students represent young people in delinquency proceedings and school suspension appeals and adults convicted as minors in parole proceedings and clemency petitions.  In 2018, she received the UNC School of Law Robert G. Byrd Award for Excellence and Creativity in Teaching. She lectures at continuing legal education programs across the country and in 2019 was named a certified trainer by the National Juvenile Defender Center Juvenile Training Immersion Program. Her research focuses on the intersection between criminal law and school discipline, policing and inequality, and the legal regulation of LGBTQ youth in child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the California Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, and North Carolina Law Review, among others. Fedders also writes for popular audiences, authoring two book chapters and serving as co-editor and contributing author of the Guide to Student Advocacy in North Carolina. Her article Schooling at Risk (Iowa Law Review 2018) was awarded the Steven S. Goldberg Award for Excellence in Legal Writing by the Education Law Association. She is a former Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholar.

Fedders attended New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholar and co-founder of the Prisoners’ Rights and Education Project. After law school, she was a Soros Justice Fellow and staff attorney at the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services, a clinical supervisor at Boston College Law School, and a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Criminal Justice Institute. She is a graduate of the National Criminal Defense College Trial Practice Institute.

Education

• J.D. (cum laude), New York University Law School (1997)
• B.A. (magna cum laude), University of Dayton (1987)

Selected Publications

Conceptualizing an Anti-Mother Juvenile Delinquency Court, 101 N.C. L. REV. 1351 (2023).
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The Anti-Parent Juvenile Court, 69 UCLA L. REV. 746 (2022).
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The End of School Policing, 109 CALIF. L. REV. 1443 (2021).
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Opioid Policing, 94 IND. L.J. 389 (2019).
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The Constant and Expanding Classroom: Surveillance in K-12 Public Schools, 97 N.C. L. REV. 1673 (2019).
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Schooling at Risk, 103 IOWA L. REV. 871 (2018).
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How Juvenile Defenders Can Help Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Primer on Educational Advocacy and Incorporating Clients' Education Histories and Records into Delinquency Representation (with J. Langberg), 42 J.L. & EDUC. 653 (2013).
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Defining the Role of Counsel in the Sentencing Phase of a Juvenile Delinquency Case, CHILD. LEGAL RTS. J., Fall 2012, at 25 (2012).
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Losing Hold of the Guiding Hand:  Ineffective Assistance of Counsel in Juvenile Delinquency Representation, 14 LEWIS & CLARK L. REV. 771 (2010).
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Race and Market Values in Domestic Infant Adoption, 88 N.C. L. REV. 1687 (2010).
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