Friday, January 13, 2006
Nationally recognized children's rights advocate to present Berger Lecture
 A nationally recognized children’s rights advocate, Judge Patricia Walker FitzGerald of the Jefferson Circuit Court Family Division in Louisville, Kentucky, will deliver the Sydney Berger Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, February 2, in Mitchell Auditorium in the Health Professions Center. The lecture is open to the public.A member of the Board of Trustees of the National Council for Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) since 2002, FitzGerald has helped affect systemic changes in family courts nationwide to safeguard children’s rights to grow up in a safe and protected environment, and has helped make the Jefferson Family Court a nationally recognized model for best practices in cases involving child abuse and neglect. She recently wrote the NCJFCJ’s proposal to open all the nation’s juvenile courts to the public. Her lecture will address the evolving rights of children and the responsive changes in family court. A member of the Jefferson Family Court since her appointment in 1995, she was chief judge from 2000-2002. A panelist or presenter at many national conferences, she was recently a plenary speaker and workshop presenter for the chief justices of the nation’s state supreme courts at the 2005 Child Protection Summit. She served as a consultant for ABC Primetime News on a 2005 program about the Jefferson Family Court, and as a consultant on the PEW Commission on Children in Foster Care DVD “Fostering the Future.” She filed a class action lawsuit challenging the conditions of foster care that led to reforms in foster care in the state of Kentucky. She received the 2004 Child Advocate of the Year award given by the Louisville Bar Foundation for exemplary service in advocating for the rights of children, and the Judge of the Year Award, given by the Kentucky Foster Care Review Board. Her work in civil rights began as a public advocate in the Kentucky Department of Justice representing persons with development disabilities. In private practice she has handled a variety of discrimination cases, most notably a federal civil rights class action suit on behalf of the inmates of Kentucky’s maximum security prison. FitzGerald has practiced law since 1978, when she received her juris doctor from the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. The lecture is generously underwritten by Charles L. and Leslie A. Berger. It is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts. A reception with the speaker will follow the lecture. |
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