10/22/08--Sanford N. Katz, Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law at Boston College Law School, was presented with the Award for Extraordinary Service to the International Society of Family Law at its 13th World Conference in Vienna, Austria in September. 

"I am enormously grateful to the Society for making this award possible," Katz said.  "It is particularly meaningful because it has been bestowed upon me by great family law scholars all over the world.”

Katz helped found the Society, the largest family law organization in the world, in Birmingham, England in 1973. It has grown from its original membership of Americans and English family law scholars to those from European and Asian countries as well as from Africa, South America. Australia, and New Zealand.

Katz served as President of the Society from 1982-1985, and has been elected to its Executive Council on which he has served since 1985.  He also edited three of the Society's publications dealing with family violence, marriage and cohabitation and alternative conflict resolution. 

Professor Katz joined the Boston College Law School faculty forty years ago.  Recruited by Father Robert F. Drinan, S.J.,  then Dean, he carried on Father Drinan's work in family law, succeeding him to the Chairmanship of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association and to the Editor-in-Chief of the Family Law Quarterly, the major family law publication in the United States.

Katz's major contribution to American family law has been in his successful efforts in bridging the gap between the academic world and the world of practice.  For those efforts he has received the highest award the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association can bestow on its members.  In addition he has been a major force in the child welfare field.  He was the principal drafter of model legislation dealing with the termination of parental rights and the adoption of children for the federal government.  Through his efforts, child abuse reporting statutes and subsidized adoption laws became a reality.

Katz's latest book, Family Law in America, was published by Oxford University Press.  He is working on a book on Adoption in America for West Publishing Company.