About

Family law raises questions of social justice with profound personal significance: Who is a parent? Who can marry? What are the rights of nonmarital couples? Who can get an abortion? Legal regulation of family life can set the financial terms of divorce, determine a person’s immigration status, or remove a child from the home for abuse or neglect.

In exploring family law's practical and policy issues at UVA Law School, students benefit from outstanding law school classroom teaching combined with clinical experience, skills training, scholarly inquiry and interdisciplinary collaboration. Family law faculty are involved in research and policy work that profoundly affects the law at the local, regional and global levels, and students have the opportunity to become involved in those activities as well.  

The Law School faculty bring their distinctive insights to complex issues such as: how should the law intervene in adult intimate relationships; how should the law regulate markets for assisted reproductive technology; how should states reform the juvenile justice systems to strengthen children and families; who should qualify as a family member in wealth transfer law; and how should the law respond to family-based vulnerabilities at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, religion and age.

Faculty Director(s)
Naomi R. Cahn
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy Distinguished Professor of Law
Armistead M. Dobie Professor of Law
Co-Director, Family Law Center