Meredith Johnson Harbach is Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law, where she teaches courses in Family Law, Children & the Law, Reproductive Justice, and Civil Procedure. Her recent scholarship has analyzed and critiqued the state’s relationship to families and children through the lens of America’s childcare law and policy. She also writes on reproductive justice and state politics. Her 2016 article, Nudging Parents, was winner of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Call for Papers Award. Professor Harbach is Chair of the AALS Section on Children & the Law. She supervises the Family Law Concentration Program at Richmond Law, and recently completed a three-year, gubernatorial appointment to the Virginia Council on Women, where she served as Chair of the Women’s Healthcare Initiative. During the 2017-18 Academic Year, Professor Harbach was a Visiting Scholar with the Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative at Emory Law School.
Presenter, "Nudging Parents," Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting (Aug. 2016).
Panelist, “Wither Redistribution? Feminism, Neoliberalism, Work, and Family,” Law & Society Conference (June 2016).
Presenter, "Nudging Parents," Willamette Faculty Workshop and the Junior Faculty Workshop, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law (Spring 2016).
Presenter, “Childcare and the New Parens Patriae," Works-in-Progress Series, SEALS Annual Meeting, Amelia Island (Aug. 2016).
Presenter, "The New Parens Patriae," Family Law Scholars & Teachers Conference, Loyola Law School, New Orleans (June 2016).
Presenter, “Childcare and the New Parens Patriae," Workshop on Children, Vulnerability and Resilience, Emory Law School (Dec. 2015).
Panelist, "School Discipline," University of Richmond Law Review Allen Chair Symposium (Oct. 2015).
Panelist, "The Role of Gender in Legal Education," Southeastern Association of Law Schools, Florida (2015).
Paper, "Childcare Market Failures," Corporate Rights versus Children's Interests Workshop, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, organized by Martha Fineman's Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative & Feminism and Legal Theory Project (Oct. 2012).
"Lawyering Theory in the Doctrinal Family Law Classroom," The Future of Family Law Education Conference, William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, MN (June 2009).
"Outsourcing the Family," Incubator Session, Emerging Family Law Scholars & Teacher Conference 2009, University of Colorado Law School, Boulder, CO (May 2009).
Commentator, Works-In-Progress Workshop, Emerging Family Law Scholars & Teacher Conference 2009, University of Colorado Law School, Boulder, CO (May 2009).
Commentator, Works-In-Progress Workshop, Emerging Family Law Scholars & Teachers Conference 2008, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, New York, NY (June 2008).
University of Richmond School of Law, Richmond, Va.
University of Richmond School of Law, Richmond, Va.
Childcare, Vulnerability, and the New Parens Patriae, 37 Yale Law & Policy Review ___ (forthcoming 2019).
Nudging Parents, 19 J. Gender Race & Just. 73 (2016); Winner, 2015-2016 Southeastern Association of Law Schools Call for Papers Award.
Forward-Looking Family Law, 51 Tulsa L. Rev. 419 (2016) (reviewing June Carbone & Naomi Cahn, Marriage Markets: How Inequality is Remaking the American Family (2014), and Clare Huntington, Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships (2014)).
Sexualization, Sex Discrimination, and Public School Dress Codes, 50 U. Rich. L. Rev. 1039 (2016).
Childcare Market Failure, 2015 Utah L. Rev. 659 (2015).
Outsourcing Childcare, 24 Yale J.L. & Feminism 254 (2012).
Is the Family a Federal Question?, 66 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 131 (2009).
At the Intersection of Bankruptcy and Divorce: Property Division Debts Under the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1994, 97 Colum. L. Rev. 91 (1997).
Feminist Legal Theory, in The Oxford Handbook of Children's Rights Law (Oxford Univ. Press, forthcoming 2019).
Young v. United Parcel Service, in Reproductive Justice Rewritten (Cambridge Univ. Press, forthcoming 2018).
He Was So Kind & Generous, 46 U. Rich. L. Rev. 963 (2012).
How (Not) to Talk about Abortion, 47 U. Rich. L. Rev. 425 (2012).
Opinion: Dress codes complicate how girls feel
Wed., May. 9, 2018
Students are refusing to wear bras in a "bracott" to protest their school's dress code (Bustle)
Tue., Apr. 17, 2018
Is your body appropriate to wear to school? (New York Times)
Tue., Apr. 17, 2018
DOMA ruling will bring Fort Lee couple military spousal benefits (CBS6)
Wed., Jun. 26, 2013
Supreme Court rulings don't affect Virginia same-sex marriage ban (Daily Press)
Wed., Jun. 26, 2013
Supreme Court may hear case that could affect Virginia same-sex marriage ban (Daily Press)
Thu., Nov. 29, 2012
Proposed regulations are bad law, bad for women (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
Tue., Jun. 12, 2012
