10/04/05--Sanford N. Katz, the Darald and Juliet Libby Millennium Professor of Law, has been elected a Visiting Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford University, England for the Trinity Term 2006. This will be Professor Katz’s third appointment to an Oxford college. In 1997 he was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College and in 2000 he was a Visiting Fellow at Pembroke College.

At Oxford Professor Katz will be continuing his comparative family law research. His ongoing study on Marriage and Marriage-Like Relationships in the United States, Canada, England, The Netherlands, Belgium and Spain attempts to examine the impact of history, politics, religious institutions and social change on marriage and civil unions.

Professor Katz joined the Boston College Law School faculty in 1968 and has been teaching Contracts and Family Law to generations of BCLS students. In 2004 Professor Katz received a Special Service Award from the Boston College Law School Alumni Association. The Award, usually granted to alumni, honored Professor Katz, a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and also a Public Health Fellow at Yale Law School, for his outstanding service and contributions to the Law School community.

Shortly after joining the law faculty, Professor Katz succeeded Father Robert F. Drinan, S. J., former Dean of Boston College Law School, as Editor-in-Chief of the Family Law Quarterly, the leading family law scholarly journal in the country, and served in that capacity for thirteen years. He also succeeded Father Drinan in becoming the Chairman of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association, the largest American professional organization for family law attorneys. In addition, Professor Katz was the President of the International Society of Family Law and now serves on its Executive Board. Professor Katz was chosen to write Father Drinan’s biographical entry into the Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law, which is scheduled for publication by Yale University Press in 2006.

Most recently Professor Katz established the Boston College/Pembroke College, Oxford program for Boston College undergraduates who would like to spend their junior year abroad and experience an Oxford legal education. In that program, BC students are treated as matriculated Oxford undergraduates. They are enrolled in law courses, live in college and participate in all college activities.

Professor Katz is the author of sixty articles and the author, co-author or editor of fourteen books. His latest book, “Family Law in America,” published by Oxford University Press has been highly praised. One Oxford reviewer referred to Professor Katz as the “doyen of American family lawyers” and an American reviewer referred to him as “the dean of family law professors in America, and one of the most well-respected scholars of family law in the world.”

Sanford Katz website