Buel presents at American Bar Association convention

Sarah M. Buel, clinical professor of law and founding director of the Diane Halle Center for Family Justice, recently presented on a panel at the American Bar Association Annual Convention in San Francisco.

The panel, “The Violence Against Women Act 2013,” addressed the March reauthorization of the act and history of the act, which originally was passed in 1994.

As a co-author of the original and successive bills, Buel discussed the evolution of the Act and how it came to include legislation provisions regarding LGBT communities, immigrants and Native Americans that had stalled the bill in the House for a long time.

The panel was co-sponsored by the ABA Sections on criminal justice, individual rights and responsibilities, the Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence, and the Human Trafficking Task Force.

A survivor of domestic violence herself, Buel has worked for more than 30 years with battered women and children. She graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she founded the Harvard Battered Women’s Advocacy Project, the Harvard Women in Prison Project and the Harvard Children and Family Rights Project.