Charisa Kiyô Smith is a Professor of Law who co-directs CUNY’s intersectional Family Law Practice Clinic and teaches first-year Torts, Contemplative Practice & the Law (Sustainable Lawyering), and Juvenile Law. Professor Smith’s work is cited by federal and state courts, government agencies, practitioners, and advocates. A graduate of Yale Law School and Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, Professor Smith was also the William Hastie Fellow at Wisconsin Law School, where she received an LL.M. and taught juvenile and family law. Professor Smith’s work addresses state overreach into the lives of marginalized families, the need for youth and community empowerment, the overcriminalization of youth, and sexual/gender-based harms among youth. A longtime Zen Buddhist, Smith fosters mindful lawyering and balance in legal education. She is passionate about carceral abolition and re-imagining the American experiment beyond ableist racial capitalism.

Professor Smith integrates legal theories including critical race feminism and vulnerability studies, while engaging new legal realism. A major theme in Smith’s scholarship is the threat to parental rights among those with mental disabilities. Notably, her article Making Good on An Historic Federal Precedent: Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Claims by Parents with Mental Disabilities in Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) Proceedings (18 Quinnipiac Health L. J. 191 (2015)) was cited in Watley v. Dep’t of Children and Families, Case No. 3:13-cv-1858(RNC) (D. Ct. Dec. 23, 2019). Smith’s article Unfit Through Unfairness: The Termination of Parental Rights Due to a Parent’s Mental Challenges (Charlotte Law Review, 2014) was cited in: In re HICKS (2016); the persuading Amicus Brief of the National Association for Children in In Re HICKS/Brown MINORS (2016); and the persuading Amicus Brief of Disabled Parents Rights in Watley v. Katz (2016). Smith’s other work addressing family law and disability justice has been published in the Stanford Law & Policy Review, and Law & Psychology Review.

Writing extensively about the legal landscape concerning youth rights, expression, repression, decarceration, and empowerment, Professor Smith’s publications include #WhoAmI: Harm and Remedy for Youth of the #MeToo Era (Univ. Penn. J. Law & Soc. Change 295 (2021))which was featured in the 2022 edition of the textbook Women & the Law  (Thomson Reuters). In the Rutgers Law Review (2023), Smith’s article Youth Visions and Empowerment: Reconstruction through Revolution, analyzes current U.S. youth-led movements and activism, asserting that their themes force dominant culture to question longstanding assumptions to a degree that political discourse now engages radical change—indeed, revolution—far beyond the hope for a Third Reconstruction. Smith’s earlier scholarship on youth law includes At the Crossroads of Rape Culture: Non-carceral Responses for #MeToo Era Youth, 36 Ohio St. J. On Disp. Resol. 773 (2021);  No Quick Fix: The Failure of Criminal Law and the Promise of Civil Law Remedies for Domestic Child Sex Trafficking, 71 U. Miami L. Rev. 1 (2016)); Nothing About Us Without Us!  The Failure of the Modern Juvenile Justice System and a Call for Community-Based Justice,Journal of Applied Research on Children (2013); and Don’t Wait Up—Issues in Juvenile Justice, 28 New Jersey Family Lawyer 144. (Spring 2008).

Professor Smith centers the need for reparative, restorative, and transformative justice through both legal and non-legal approaches. Her 2022 South Dakota Law Review article—Over-Privileged: Legal Cannabis, Drug Offending & The Right to Family Integrity—argues that cannabis law conflicts have crucial implications for the constitutional rights of U.S. families, in a federalism dilemma as untenable as marriage inequality. Smith argues that social equity measures in cannabis legalization regimes must thus repair harms caused by the family policing system, just as they cognize harms of the carceral system. In From Empathy Gap to Reparations: An Analysis of Caregiving, Criminalization, and Family Empowerment, 90 Fordham Law Review 6 (2022), Professor Smith discusses what she coins “the empathy gap” in public discourse and policymaking regarding struggling caregivers, depending on their particular identityHer article When COVID Capitalism Silences Children, 71 Kansas L. Rev 553 (2022-2023)) scrutinizes COVID Capitalist policies through lens of youth and family empowerment.  Smith’s forthcoming work in the Seton Hall Law Review—A Post Dobbs Future: Bailing Water Downstream to Center Democracy’s Children—argues that the reversal of Roe v. Wade not only imperils reproductive autonomy, but will exacerbate childhood precarity through state sanctioned forced births (and caregiving). This article ultimately asserts that true provision for children requires re-aligned budget priorities (particularly divestment–reinvestment concerning punitive systems) and widespread, revitalized self-governance as a baseline.

Professor Smith’s commitment to teaching and transformation stems from wide-ranging experience in legal practice, human rights work, and public service. She has represented children and families in criminal and civil matters, with expertise in Alternative Dispute Resolution. Smith served as a Staff Attorney at Advocates for Children of New York, Inc. and at the JustChildren Program of the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia. Professor Smith’s work for women’s rights organizations in Latin America and with sexually exploited youth in the Dominican Republic and New York City further inspires her to foster youth agency and broader self-determination among survivors and marginalized communities.

Professor Smith is the recipient of numerous distinctions including the Arthur Liman Public Interest Law Fellowship, the Schell International Human Rights Fellowship, the Michael Rockefeller Fellowship, and the Harvard History Essay Prize. In 2010, Professor Smith’s book Blending Colors From Life: Trenton’s Own Watercolorist, Tom Malloy won an Honorable Mention at the NY Book Festival as the captivating biography of an African-American artist and civic leader. The book received research funding from institutions including the New Jersey Historical Commission and Radcliffe College.

Prior to entering academia, Smith clerked for a leader in the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and directed the intern community service program for the late Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy. She has taught courses on children’s rights, race and the urban education system, and professionalism at Brooklyn College and other undergraduate institutions.

Headshot of Professor Charisa Kiyo Smith

Contact

Email
charisa.smith@law.cuny.edu
Phone
718-340-4179
Office
6-121

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