Role: Hastie Fellow, Univeristy of Wisconsin Law School
Madison, Wisconsin

  Contact: csmith64@wisc.edu

  Research Interests:
Family Law | Child Welfare | Juvenile and Criminal Justice | Education Law | Alternative Dispute Resolution | Critical Theory

Charisa Smith is the 2015-2017 Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Her work focuses on the state's impact on the intimate lives of families and children. Her recent articles have addressed the legal treatment of parents with mental disabilities and the efficacy of the current juvenile justice system. Her forthcoming work focuses on statutory responses to the domestic sex trafficking of minors, the legal treatment of "sexting" and cyberbullying by children, and discrimination in special education law. Charisa applies lessons from psychological, anthropological, and human rights literatures in articulating theoretical frameworks that can improve the law's effect upon society and the economy. She also incorporates Vulnerability Theory and other critical theories to address the limits of those literatures and to argue for a more egalitarian purposing of law and public systems.