Susan Brooks is a pioneer in the emerging field of therapeutic jurisprudence. She is also an expert on experiential learning, family law and children’s rights. Professor Brooks came to the law school from the faculty of the Vanderbilt University Law School. She was a co-founder of the Tennessee Relative Caregiver Coalition and the Tennessee Association of Professional Mediators and served as lead investigator for Tennessee’s Court Improvement Program and as a principal investigator on an Immigrant Community Assessment sponsored by Metropolitan Nashville. After clerking for the Hon. Bernard A. Friedman of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, she practiced with Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal in Chicago. Professor Brooks co-edited "Relationship-Centered Lawyering: Social Science Theory for Transforming Legal Practice" with R.G. Madden in 2009. Her scholarly publications include “Representing Children in Families,” in the Nevada Law Journal, and “Clinical Anthology: Readings for Live-Client Clinics,” a textbook that she co-edited. Her publications also include chapters in “The Affective Assistance of Counsel” and in “Creative Child Advocacy: Global Perspectives.” She was a case worker for Jewish Family and Community Service in Chicago before earning her J.D. at New York University School of Law, where she was note and comment editor for the New York University Law Review and received the Judge Aileen Haas Schwartz Award for outstanding work in the field of children and the law. She is a member of the Global Alliance for Justice Education.
Articles
Epistemology and Ethics in Relationship-Centered Legal Education and Practice (with Robert Madden III), New York Law School Law Review (2011)
Epistemology involves views about knowledge and how it is developed. It is the study of...
Meeting the Professional Identity Challenge in Legal Education Through a Relationship-Centered Experiential Curriculum, University of Baltimore Law Review (2011)
Legal education is facing a series of crises, the worst of which may well be...
Trying Differently: Rethinking Juvenile Justice Using a Neuro-Behavioral Model (with Diane Malbin and David Boulding), ABA Criminal Justice Section: Juvenile Justice Committee Newsletter (2010)
Trying Differently: A Relationship-Centered Approach to Representing Clients With Cognitive Challenges (with David M. Boulding), International Journal of Law and Psychiatry (2010)
This article demonstrates the usefulness of an innovative framework called "Relationship-Centered Lawyering" to enhancing real...
Relationship-Centered Lawyering: Social Science Theory for Transforming Legal Practice (with Robert Madden III), University of Puerto Rico Law Review (2009)
This article explores a new approach to legal practice grounded in human development and social...