Charles Street Chats: Q&A with Shanta Trivedi
Shanta Trivedi, an assistant law professor, spent nearly a decade in legal practice before joining The University of Baltimore School of Law in 2021. Now, with her expertise in topics such as child welfare, family law, domestic violence and more, Trivedi fittingly serves as faculty director for the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts.
Behind the Chat
Order: caffè latte
Location: Flying Fruit Cafe, sixth floor, John and Frances Angelos Law Center
Distance from campus: 0 miles
Q: What inspired you to focus on child welfare law?
A: I used to do securities litigation—which I did not enjoy—and I wanted to go into nonprofit work; that's what I always wanted to do. I ended up volunteering at a domestic violence organization in New York, and I applied to a job representing parents in child welfare proceedings without really knowing what the child welfare system was, or how it operated.
I think most people assume that if you have a child welfare case, you have done something horrible, truly horrible. I started volunteering at this organization called Brooklyn Defender Services—they represented parents—and when I got there, and I saw what the cases actually were, I was really surprised. A lot of them looked like poverty to me or conditions that result from poverty, like substance use disorder or even violence can be the result of trauma from poverty. I did notice pretty quickly that the vast majority of my clients were Black or immigrants, and we represented exclusively low-income clients, because we were appointed by the court. That really changed my life and definitely the trajectory of my career because I became really dedicated to that work, and even when I started doing more traditional family law work, like custody and divorce, I always felt connected to child welfare work.
Q: Your areas of expertise—particularly child welfare, parents’ and children’s rights, reproductive justice and more—have become increasingly topical in the last decade. How have your teaching and scholarship in these areas developed to reflect that relevance and how do you prepare the next generation of law students for facing these issues in their own careers?
A: Most of the families that I have encountered in this system just need help in some way. The first law review article I ever wrote was about the harm of removing kids from their parents. That research is really astounding, and it was a difficult thing to write. As I was writing it, we had the immigration crisis at the southern border and that was a really strange time for people who represent people who are incarcerated and people who have their kids put into foster care because you see that same separation. This term “family separation” that became everywhere had been happening for decades in this country, historically, and then also in our courts. We just don't see it because people aren't sitting in family courts—and you can't even access those cases; those proceedings are closed in Maryland—but I've seen it, and it's no less horrible inside a courtroom than it is at the southern border.
What's happened as a result of this is a growing realization that family separation is bad for everybody and a growing understanding that there are some problems with policing generally, and that there are analogies between the criminal policing system and what people now call the family policing system, sort of this surveillance and punishment aspect rather than always focusing on what's best for our children. And I think a lot of that has been led by people who have experienced this system and the big shift in my scholarship and a lot of people's scholarship is to listen to what people who have experienced the system say and let them lead the future path. I also try to integrate this philosophy into my teaching more.
Law is, and particularly family law, is about people.
The way that we teach law historically, people are reduced to facts on a page. There's a very famous family law case called Zablocki v. Redhail, where Mr. Red Hail is a Native American and there's no mention of the fact that he is Native American in the case at all. They even misspell his name in the case. There is another famous case called Moore v. City of East Cleveland, where the case is about zoning and whether a family can live together, and the zoning ordinance at issue, people believe that it's based on race, and there's no mention at all in the the majority opinion that this family is Black. It's mentioned in the dissent. Law is, and particularly family law, is about people. It's words on a page, but these are people's lives, and their children, and I try to incorporate that into my teaching.
Watch: Shanta explains why Maryland is a great place to practice law
Q: As director for the law school’s Center for Families, Children and the Courts, tell us about the center’s work, what sets it apart and some of your goals for its future.
A: The center has always had a focus on supporting the most vulnerable families. The law can be harmful and experiencing a family law case is painful, and we want to reduce whatever harm we can. In thinking about what the future looks like, continuing with the idea of asking what people impacted by legal systems want, I want the center to be community led. I want the people of Baltimore and across the country to tell us what they need and for us to figure out how we can support them. A big part of that is figuring out how to work with the community to reduce the number of people that end up in systems in the first place and to work with our community partners, because they're all overwhelmed, especially the community partners that represent low-income populations. How can we support them? Can we provide space? Can we provide trainings? Can we connect people? We've always been an institution that is a part of the community, and we want to invite people in to tell us what they need and how we can help.
We, of course, have legal expertise, which we are happy to use to provide that support, but we don't have all the expertise and being just a place where people can convene and share expertise and learn from each other is a big goal of mine. We currently also run a truancy court program where our amazing staff goes into the schools and work with kids who are struggling with absenteeism—we know that absenteeism is usually a symptom of something else—so we try to figure out what's going on and where we can be most helpful. We have volunteers who come in to act as judges and sit with the students, work with them and figure out what's going on and where can we help. Sometimes it's legal issues, sometimes it's poverty, sometimes it's the bus line, it’s all kinds of things, the kinds of things that people are dealing with every day. We try to reduce that burden and help where we can.
What Charms Us
We end all of our Charles Street Chats with the same question: What do you love most about Baltimore? Here's Shanta's answer.
My favorite thing about Baltimore is the community. The legal community is so generous and tight knit that whenever you pick up the phone and ask someone for a favor or to speak to a student, or give them advice, you always get a ‘yes.’ And the community we serve is also amazing. People are working really hard in the worst of conditions. They’re doing their best. They inspire me and I love working with them and representing them.