Howard Davidson
Director ABA Center on Children and The Law
Staff Director, ABA Commission on Youth at Risk

            Mr. Davidson has been actively involved with the legal aspects of child protection for over 30 years. He has directed the ABA Center on Children and the Law since its 1978 establishment. The Center provides extensive training, technical assistance, consulting, and publications for lawyers, child welfare agencies, juvenile (dependency) courts and those providing legal representation in child abuse and neglect related cases.

            He served as chair of the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect, is a founding board member of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and serves on the board of ECPAT-USA and on the Maryland Children’s Justice Task Force.

           Mr. Davidson has authored many legal articles on child maltreatment as well as legal commentaries to chapters of the American Psychiatric Association book, Family Violence: A Clinical and Legal Guide. His most recent writings include A Common Bond: Maltreated Children and Animals in the Home—Guidelines for Practice and Policy, International Legal Principles for Judges and Child Welfare Agencies to Apply with Unaccompanied and Undocumented Immigrant Children, and several law-related articles in the recently-published Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Violence.

            In the 1970’s he spent five years as a legal services attorney exclusively representing children in juvenile court, creating the Children’s Law Project of Greater Boston Legal Services, one of the country’s first children’s law centers.