Elaine E. Sutherland
Professor of Law

Specialty Areas & Course Descriptions

Child Law, Family Law, Human Reproduction and the Law, Juvenile Justice Seminar, Contemporary Issues in Family Law

Academic Credentials

1978 LL.B (First Class Honors), University of Glasgow, Scotland
1985 LL.M., University of British Columbia, Canada

Professional Background

Professor Sutherland began her teaching career at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1980, subsequently moving to the University of Glasgow in 1990. In February 2006, she took up the post as Professor of Child and Family Law in the Law School at the University of Stirling. Her relationship with Lewis and Clark Law School began in 1984 and, since 1999, she has spent six months of the year (July thru December) teaching, researching and writing here, returning to the University of Stirling to do much the same there for the other half of the year.

Her primary interests lie in the areas of child and family law and most of her publications are in these fields (please see also bibliography). Having just completed the second edition of her treatise, Child and Family Law (2008), she is currently working on the third edition of another of her books, Children's Rights in Scotland (2nd ed, 2001), which will be published in 2009. Her more long term interest is in comparing the impact of the US Constitution on child and family law, in general, and children's rights, in particular, with that of the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, in these areas.

Sutherland is consulted regularly by government agencies, non-governmental organizations and the media, in Scotland, on child and family law and reform thereof, and attends, and presents papers at, national and international conferences. She regards academic life as offering the best of all worlds – opportunities to teach, research, write and travel.