Kansas Supreme Court dissent cites article by Professor Pruitt, Janet Wallace '10

An article written by Professor Lisa R. Pruitt and Janet Wallace ’10 was cited in a dissenting opinion in a Kansas Supreme Court case involving an order adjudicating a 13-year-old girl as a Child in Need of Care.

The Supreme Court reversed a Kansas Court of Appeals decision that had reversed a district court’s decision affirming the girl’s status as a CINC. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Caleb Stegall cited Pruitt’s and Wallace’s 2012 Missouri Law Review article “Judging Parents, Judging Place: Poverty, Rurality and Termination of Parental Rights.”

Lisa R. Pruitt, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor at UC Davis School of Law, is a scholar whose recent work explores the legal relevance of rural spatiality, including how it inflects dimensions of gender, race, and ethnicity. Pruitt's work also considers rural-urban difference in transnational and international contexts.She is the recipient of the law school’s 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award.