Faculty and Fellows

Director

Leslie J. Harris, Dorothy Kliks Fones Professor of Law
Leslie Harris has taught Children and the Law since 1982. She co-authored textbooks on family law and children and the law that are widely used throughout the United States. Among her recent projects is an empirical study of parental responsibility laws. She serves on the advisory board for the Oregon Juvenile Court Improvement Project, the board of the Oregon Juvenile Law Training Academy, and the Juvenile Code Revision workgroup of the Oregon Law Commission. Harris is an elected member of the American Law Institute and has received the law school's Orlando John Hollis Faculty Teaching Award.

2009-2010 Child Advocacy Fellows

Rebekah Murphy, a 2009-10 KLC Fellow, worked during the summer between her first and second years of law school for a law professor, researching family law topics including the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction. The next summer she learned the ins and outs of municipal prosecution as an intern at the Boise City Attorney’s Office. Rebekah came to U of O law school after graduating magna cum laude from Southern Oregon University with a history degree. Between undergrad and law school Rebekah managed a small Italian restaurant in Ashland, OR and traveled. Rebekah was raised in Medford, Oregon by public school teachers, and has always had a desire to work with kids. She worked as a camp counselor after her freshman year of college and volunteered at a local middle and high school her last year of college, while seriously considering pursuing an education masters. Ultimately, she opted for law school, with aspirations to work in juvenile public defense. Rebekah has also been active with the Legal Research and Writing Program, the Admissions Office, and the Oregon Law Review.

Kristin Ware is a Campbell Fellow for 1009-20. After her first year of law school, she worked with the Honorable Daniel R. Murphy, from the Linn County Circuit Court, as a part of the Child Advocacy Externship Program. She spent the summer after her second year of law school in Washington, D.C. working for the ABA Center on Children and the Law. Kristin is from Seattle, and she attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island where she majored in history and English literature. After college, she taught at a high school in northern Indiana for three years. Working with high school students proved to be an incredibly rewarding experience, and Kristin came to law school at the University of Oregon seeking a career in child advocacy.  Since coming to Oregon, Kristin has been involved in the school’s Child Advocacy Program. She has attended several conferences and taught classes at a local juvenile detention center through the Juvenile Street Law program. She is also an executive editor for the Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation.

David Sherbo-Huggins, a 2009-10 KLC Fellow, worked for Team Child in Seattle during the summer between his first and second years of law school. He worked on a project to improve school disciplinary practices in the Seattle Public Schools. He is currently clerking for the Federal Public Defender for the District of Oregon and looks forward to beginning his third year as a fellow with the Oregon Child Advocacy Project. David graduated cum laude from the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon with a B.A. in political science. For six summers he worked with children at an inner city summer sports camp in Portland, OR. He has been interested in advocating for foster children since his senior year in high school, when he learned the life story of his own foster brother. His interest carried on through college where he completed his Honors Thesis, which was used by an Oregon advocacy group, the Juvenile Rights Project Inc. (JRP), to help enact legislation guaranteeing educational stability for all Oregon foster children.

Sara Kearsley is a 2009-10 Campbell Fellow. She s involved with Juvenile StreetLaw and the Child and Family Law Association; she is also a research assistant and tutor for the Legal Research and Writing program at the law school. During the summer of 2009 she was a Child Advocacy Extern with Judge Daniel Murphy in Linn County. Originally from eastern Idaho, she moved to Oregon to attend Pacific University, graduating with a degree in biology. Although she worked as a natural resources technician and a wetlands botanist, Sara switched career paths to spend more time with her two small children. She became a full-time childcare provider in her own home for over three years and then an educational assistant for special needs pre-school age children. A few of the children with whom she worked were also foster children, and this sparked a greater interest for Sara in Child Advocacy. As a law student, Sara also continues to volunteer in her children’s classrooms at a local elementary school and at the Oregon Zoo.

Alyssa Knudsen is a Campbell Fellow for 2009-10. She serves as the secretary for the Child and Family Law Association. During the summer between her first and second years of law school, Alyssa worked as a Child Advocacy Extern at Child Centered Solutions in Portland, helping attorneys represent children in domestic relations cases. Alyssa is also interested in mediation. She is a mediation clinic student, mediating Lane county small claims cases. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Spanish from the University of Oregon in 2008. She is proficient to fluent in Spanish. She interned for Camp Adventure Youth Services, running a summer camp for military kids on a U.S. Air Force Base in Italy. Alyssa has volunteered as a Girl Scouts Mentor, Special Olympics Coach, and as a translator for Mending Kids International in Ecuador.

Project Alumni