The Y-Lab Writing Group (“Writing Group”) is a community of students and faculty who come together each week to advance their academic writing and substantive projects related to issues they care deeply about in child/youth advocacy and the law. The Writing Group meets one hour per week throughout the academic year. Students will have opportunities to present their own work as well as to provide feedback and ideas to their peers.
Participants in the Writing Group include Y-Lab Fellows pursuing their capstone paper requirement, other HLS students (including LLMs) working on child-related topics, and occasionally students from other Harvard schools. Any Law student (Fellow or not) may choose to receive academic credit (see information from the Registrar here, https://hls.harvard.edu/registrar/upper-level-j-d-and-ll-m-writing-groups/), but students who are not officially enrolled in the Writing Group may still participate.
The Writing Group will meet on most Thursdays, from 12:30-1:20 pm, during the 2025-2026 academic year. If you are interested in participating, please come to the Yellow House (second floor conference room) for the first meeting on September 18, 2025.
Presentation topics from past years have included, among others:
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- Children’s rights and homeschool regulation
- Students with disabilities and Massachusetts vocational schools
- Revitalizing the democratic vision of public education
- School fees and neocolonialism in Kenya
- A call for a more protective standard for consent searches of minors
- Examining the use of prosecution to empower child sexual assault survivors
- Abuse reporting in youth sports
- Civil rights liability and the EdTech revolution
- Challenges to social media restrictions in juvenile probation conditions
- International adoption
- Children and domestic violence