Barbara A. Fedders
Reef C. Ivey II Excellence Fund Term Scholar, Associate Professor of Law, Director of Clinical Programs, and Director of the Youth Justice Clinic
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 (June 2023).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress
The Anti-Parent Juvenile Court, 69 UCLA L. REV. 746 (2022).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | Hein | BEPress
The End of School Policing, 109 CALIF. L. REV. 1443 (2021).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress
Opioid Policing, 94 IND. L.J. 389 (2019).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress
The Constant and Expanding Classroom: Surveillance in K-12 Public Schools, 97 N.C. L. REV. 1673 (2019).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress
Schooling at Risk, 103 IOWA L. REV. 871 (2018).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress
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).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein
Defining the Role of Counsel in the Sentencing Phase of a Juvenile Delinquency Case, CHILD. LEGAL RTS. J., Fall 2012, at 25 (2012).
SSRN | Hein
Losing Hold of the Guiding Hand: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel in Juvenile Delinquency Representation, 14 LEWIS & CLARK L. REV. 771 (2010).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress
Race and Market Values in Domestic Infant Adoption, 88 N.C. L. REV. 1687 (2010).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress
In the Media
- Fedders Weighs in on Police Officers in Schools (WNCN)
- Fedders Quoted in "End the School-to-Prison Pipeline" Column (Washington Post)
- Fedders Op-Ed: Progress on NC School Suspensions, Violence, But More to Do (News and Observer)
- Fedders Op-Ed: Dressing up Bigotry in NC as Religious Freedom (News and Observer)
- Fedders Rebuts Bill That Would Try Juveniles as Adults (Indy Week)
- Prof. Fedders Participates in Duke Panel on the Effects of School Suspension Policies (Duke Chronicle)
- Fedders Op-Ed: HB 217 Poses Dire Consequences for Young Offenders (The Herald-Sun)
- Fedders Op-Ed: Zero Tolerance and the School-to-Prison Pipeline (Chapel Hill News)
- Fedders Weighs in on the School to Prison Pipeline (UNC-TV)
- Op-Ed: It's Time to Show Some Compassion