When Assumptions Hurt: Separating Myths From Evidence In Intimate Partner Domestic Violence With Professor Joan Meier

Julie Field (0:17)

Welcome to Thinking Boldly! This is the podcast series for the Consilium Institute. I'm retired judge Julie Field, and I am here with the co-founder of the Consilium Institute, Heidi Webb. And we are very honored today to have Professor Joan Meier with us to talk about the pioneering work that she has done for families across the country and really across the world.

So may I call you Joan?

Joan Meier (0:45)

Of course.

Julie Field (0:46)

Okay, Joan, welcome, and thank you for being here with us.

Joan Meier (0:50)

Thank you so much for having me, Julie. It's great to be here.

Julie Field (0:53)

Well, and let me just tell the world about your brilliance because I've been able to learn much about you over the years that I've known you, but I think the world needs to know who you are and what you've accomplished. So Joan Meier is the National Family Violence Law Center Professor of Clinical Law and Director of the National Family Violence Law Center at George Washington University Law School. Professor Meier has been a clinical law professor for 34 years at GW Law School, and she has founded three pioneering and nationally recognized interdisciplinary domestic violence clinical programs. Joan is well known for her publications on domestic violence, child custody, social science and the law, her clinical teaching, her publications on various Supreme Court decisions, and especially known for her five-year empirical study, child custody outcomes in cases involving parental alienation and abuse allegations, which was funded by the National Institute of Justice and completed in 2019

Those findings have been written about in scholarship and multiple media outlets, including the Washington Post and the New Yorker. Professor Meier founded the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project, DVLEAP, in 2003 to provide pro bono appeals in domestic violence cases. And in August of 2019 is when Professor Meier stepped down from DVLEAP and launched the National Family Violence Law Center at George Washington Law.

This center is the only national organization specializing in both domestic violence and child abuse. It focuses on improving court responses to such cases through professional curricula and trainings, amicus briefs and policy consultation. Joan has received numerous awards for her cutting edge work, including the Kahn Award from the National Equal Justice Library for her article on domestic violence and welfare reform. Joan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1980 and cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School in 1983, where I first had the opportunity to meet Joan, who was a couple of years ahead of me and someone I much admired. She also clerked on the US. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit after law school. So Joan, thank you again so much for joining us today. We are just really excited to hear from you and your wisdom today. So thank you.

Joan Meier (3:34)

Thank you again. I apologize for the ridiculous length of my title, which has to do with being a research professor for a center other than a name anyway. Thank you for saying it all.

Julie Field (3:46)

Oh, it's worth saying all of it because of all the work that you've done. I mean, you've done cutting edge work.

I know that you've been doing work around domestic violence and clinical teaching and approaching these issues from a different perspective and a new perspective that started back when you first started teaching, I think, 30 plus years ago. So what got you started with doing work with families and particularly in domestic violence and child protection?

Joan Meier (4:21)

It's an interesting question. When I was in law school, I think it was 1983, my last year, the first article came out in a mainstream national publication about domestic violence. It was The Burning Bed, the Farrah Fawcett show about The Burning Bed.

I had already gotten interested in this topic, and I think it was because I knew I was a feminist and I identified that way.

I'm not sure what in particular about domestic violence, but I wanted equality for women and men in families. This thing came out and I went up and bought 10 copies, and I got really interested in it. My first job after law school was with legal services in Chicago.

It was just a summer position and it was a fellowship. They allowed me to work on a criminal domestic violence case. And I was the advocate. I wasn't even a bard and wasn't able to represent her, but I came in as an advocate and I advocated for her to get a protection order, even though she was still living with the guy. And the judge yelled at all of us, you want me to give her a protection order and she's still going to live with him? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that kind of, I mean, I was already very interested in the topic. But I have to say, I think that really radicalized me in the sense that, oh my God, we have a lot of work to do. So, I came out of that being very interested. And I had a couple other jobs before I got into my teaching career. And all through them, I was interested in this and I did a little bit of pro bono on the side in one position or another, different types of things. And I think even before I got into my teaching job, I wrote my first article for the Washington Monthly, which is a very short kind of talkie magazine. And it was about the history of denial of domestic violence and how all the systems deny it. And it was very, there was a very rich field to draw on for that article. So I wrote about police court, prosecutors in courts and talked about the changes that are starting to happen. So I was already looking into that and knowing what was going on and so forth. And I thought I wanted to teach because I was the child of a professor, not a law professor, but I came from an academic family. And I thought of myself as kind of intellectual and I wanted to be in academics. But I also really wanted to make change and do things and help clients. So I did some of that first. And then the teaching job I took, of course, was in the clinical programs, which allowed me with students to represent people in court. And so quickly, I started in a broader family law clinic, and then I created my own domestic violence clinic one year into it. And have been doing that work ever since. That's a short beginning, kind of.