Barbara A. Babb
Associate Professor of Law and Director, Center for Families, Children and the Courts
B.S., with highest distinction, Pennsylvania State University, 1973
M.S., Cornell University, 1978
J.D., Cornell University, 1981
Expertise
- Family Law
- Child Advocacy
- Unified Family Courts
- Interdisciplinary Scholarship and Teaching
- Therapeutic Jurisprudence
- Family Justice System Reform
- Clinical Legal Education/Experiential Learning
Website: http://law.ubalt.edu/cfcc
Contact Information
Telephone:(410) 837-5661
Room Number: CM 307, Family Justice Building, 5 West Chase Street
E-mail
Administrative Assistant: Sharon Curley, (410) 837-5615, (on campus x5615), CM 311, 5 West Chase Street
Administrative Assistant: Mimi Lumeh, (410) 837-5180, (on campus x5180), 5 West Chase Street
Courses taught
Center for Families, Children and the Courts' Student Fellows Program I
Center for Families, Children and the Courts' Student Fellows Program II
Biography:
Professor Barbara Babb, Director of the Center for Families, Children and the Courts, joined the faculty in 1989 after three years as managing attorney of the Domestic Law Unit at the Legal Aid Bureau in Baltimore, Maryland. Prior to that, Professor Babb was in private practice for several years with a law firm in New York. She was a visiting professor at the George Washington University Law School during the 1999 spring semester.
She teaches several courses in the family law area. Professor Babb's scholarship focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to family law through the application of therapeutic jurisprudence and an ecological/holistic perspective and to court reform in family law through the creation of unified family courts. She has written on family law issues in the Southern California Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Family Law Quarterly, Family Court Review, Journal of Health Care Law and Policy and the Maryland Bar Journal, among others. Professor Babb has spoken at the national and international levels on unified family courts and family law decision-making. She has participated in court and law reform projects in Maryland, nationally, and internationally. She is a co-founder of the Domestic Law Pro Se Assistance Project, a court-based program to assist self-represented family law litigants that currently operates in all of Maryland's Circuit Courts. Professor Babb has taught the mandatory Professionalism course to new admittees of the Maryland Bar. She is a past Chair and current Executive Committee Member of the Family and Juvenile Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and she has co-chaired the In-House Clinics Committee of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education. Professor Babb has served as a member of the Family and Juvenile Law Section Council of the Maryland State Bar Association and has Co-chaired the Family Courts Committee of the American Bar Association's Section of Family Law. She is an Advisory Council member and former member of the ABA's Standing Committee on Substance Abuse and has participated in that committee's model national unified family court project. Professor Babb also is a member of the ABA's Unified Family Courts Coordinating Council. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Family Court Review. She frequently teaches continuing legal education courses in the family law and child advocacy areas.
Professor Babb served as a consultant to Chief Judge Robert C. Murphy's Family Division Review Committee in 1993, to the Court of Appeals of Maryland's Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure to draft the Family Division Rule in 1997, and to Chief Judge Robert M. Bell's Ad Hoc Committee on the Implementation of the Family Divisions from 1998 and 2000. She chaired the Pro Bono Coordinating Council from 1990 until 1994, and she was a member of the Board of Directors of the People's Pro Bono Action Center, Inc. during that same period.
Professor Babb received a University System of Maryland Regents' Award for Outstanding Public Service in 1999 and the Benjamin L. Cardin Distinguished Service Award from the Maryland Legal Services Corporation in 1998. She received the Women's Law Center's Rosalyn B. Bell Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Family Law in 1995. Professor Babb received the law school's Full-Time Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award in 2001 and the James P. May Excellence in Teaching Award in 1996.
Professor Babb is a member of the New York and Maryland bars.
Selected Publications
Professor Babb's Articles on SSRN
Books
Performance Standards and Measures for Maryland's Family Divisions (Maryland Judiciary, 2002) (with Jeffrey Kuhn)
Articles and Essays
Reevaluating Where We Stand: A Comprehensive Survey of America's Family Justice Systems, 46 Family Court Review 230 (2008)
A Truancy Court Program to Keep Students in School, 39 Maryland Bar Journal 44 (2006)
An Analysis of Unified Family Courts in Maryland and California: Their Relevance for Ontario's Family Justice System, 24 Canadian Family Law Quarterly 25 (2005)
Substance Abuse, Families, and Unified Family Courts: The Creation of a Caring Justice System, 3 Journal of Health Care Law & Policy 1 (1999) (with Judith D. Moran)
Fashioning an Interdisciplinary Framework for Court Reform in Family Law: A Blueprint to Construct a Unified Family Court, 71 Southern California Law Review 469 (1998)
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Family Law Jurisprudence: Application of an Ecological and Therapeutic Perspective, 72 Indiana Law Journal 775 (1997)