David M. Smolin

David Mark Smolin (born in New York City, USA) is a professor of law at Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama. He is also the director for Cumberland Law School's Center for Biotechnology, Law and Ethics [11] and faculty advisor for Cumberland's Law, Science and Technology Society. Smolin is the author of over 35 articles, primarily published as law review articles, though some of his works have appeared in journals such as First Things. His brother is theoretical physicist Lee Smolin.

Smolin graduated first in his class and Order of the Coif from the University of Cincinnati College of Law. He is a nationally recognized expert in Bioethics and Biotechnology Issues; Reproductive Constitutional Issues; International Children's Issues (adoption, children's rights, child labor, child trafficking); ^[1] Family & Juvenile Law; and Law and Religion. He has testified before legislative committees in the U.S. Congress, as well as five states on constitutional issues.

Smolin is also an advocate for international adoption reform ^[2] and the creator of an informational website on international adoption called www.adoptinginternationally.com ^[3]. His paper, Child Laundering, published by the Wayne Law Review, won Cumberland's inaugural Lightfoot, Franklin & White Faculty Scholarship Award for the most significant scholarly work published during the preceding year. ^[4]

His own adoption story was featured on NPRS's Morning Edition titled Adoption Stories Gone Bad. ^[5]

Smolin joined the Cumberland faculty in 1987 after clerking for Senior Judge George Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 1986-1987. Prior to that Smolin worked in a psychiatric hospital. He has also served as an adjunct professor at the interdenominational Beeson Divinity School. ^[6].

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Biotechnology, law and ethics

Smolin heads Cumberland Law School's Center for Biotechnology, Law, and Ethics, a center unlike any other of its kind in the United States. ^[7] Research focuses on contemporary bioethical dilemmas and issues related to the Center's Annual Symposium, which is typically co-sponsored by the Cumberland Law Review. The Center has attracted numerous experts including ethicist Gregory Pence, atmospheric scientist John Christy, and U.S. Congressman Artur Davis. Each year the Cumberland Law Review typically publishes an issue featuring articles by visiting speakers.

Human rights and intercountry adoption

Human rights

Smolin is a human rights advocate but also approaches the international movement with concerns which can be summed up in the conclusion to his paper Will International Human Rights Be Used as a Tool of Cultural Genocide? The Interaction of Human Rights Norms, Religion, Culture, and Gender published by the Journal of Law and Religion.

Smolin's basic view regarding the scope of the international movement is that not all worthy human causes deserve to be labeled or acted upon as a right. He believes that doing so could erode or destroy the most basic human rights if the international movement gained enough power to enact all of its goals. His quotation is as follows:

The reform of human rights law, if it were to be attempted, would involve severely reducing the scope of its aspirations. For example, it would certainly not be a small thing if international human rights law could be effective against genocide; international human rights law, it would seem, has dissipated its moral force and its efforts by offering itself to be used by virtually every cause that can be placed in the idiom of ‘rights-talk.’ Not every worthy cause or human good can or should be transformed into an international ‘right.’ Religion has had to learn, sometimes only through painful and destructive experience, that not all of its most cherished goods can or should be enforced by political means. The relatively young human rights movement needs to be taught the same lesson, hopefully before it seriously mars its reputation by destroying the very rights it was designed to protect. Until and unless a severe winnowing of the goals and norms of international human rights law occurs, religious believers, and people of good will who believe in intermediary institutions, religious freedom, and family rights, should be warned. For the great contemporary protector of rights, the international human rights movement, would, if given real power, constitute one of the gravest threats to those rights yet conceived by humanity.^[8]

International adoption, child trafficking and child laundering

Much of Smolin's recent academic work regards international adoption, child trafficking and child laundering. Two articles gaining attention are available for download at bepress legal repository.

The first article won Cumberland Law School's first annual Lightfoot award for most significant scholarly paper published during the preceding year and is consistently listed in the 10 Most Popular Articles in the bepress Legal Series: ^[9]

• Child Laundering: How the Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes and Incentivizes the Practices of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Stealing Children, also published by the Wayne Law Review.
• Unpublished: Child Laundering As Exploitation: Applying Anti-Trafficking Norms to Intercountry Adoption Under the Coming Hague Regime
• The Two Faces of Intercountry Adoption: The Significance of the Indian Adoption Scandals, Seton Hall Law Review; [12] [13] and
• Intercountry Adoption as Child Trafficking, Valparaiso Law Review [14].

Cumberland School of Law Symposium on International Adoption

On April 15th, 2005 Smolin, with the cooperation of Cumberland School of Law, hosted a Symposium on International adoption. The purpose was to "take advantage of the gathered expertise to explore the question of how international adoption can be reformed to ensure respect for the rights and dignity of birth families, children and adoptive families [the adoption triad]." ^[10].

Richard Cross, a senior special agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] assigned to the ICE Human Trafficking Unit in Seattle, Washington, spoke at the event. His entire lecture and audio file from the lecture are available for download on Cumberland's website. ^[11]

Richard Cross, the lead federal investigator for the prosecution of Lauryn Galindo for visa fraud and money laundering involved in Cambodian adoptions, estimated that most of the 800 adoptions Galindo facilitated were fraudulent--either based on fraudulent paperwork, coerced/induced/recruited relinquishments, babies bought, identities of the children switched, etc. ^[12]

Adopting Internationally website

Recently Smolin, along with his wife, launched www.adoptinginternationally.com, a website meant to provide information regarding "the complex issues associated with international adoption." The site includes personal stories and academic analysis. ^[13]

The site is also based, in part, on the Smolin's personal experience in the field of international adoption, and the Smolins are unabashedly dedicated to reforming intercountry adoption "so that it may consistently and reliably assist all members of the adoption triad (birth families, adoptees, and adoptive families)."

Education

• BA Applied Psychology, New College of Florida 1980
• JD University of Cincinnati College of Law 1986
• Clerk Senior Judge George Edwards, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 1986–87
• Fellow of the Southern Center for Law and Ethics

Selected works and conferences

Recent articles

• Overcoming Religious Objections to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Emory International Law Review. [15] [16] [17]
• Child Laundering, Wayne Law Review [18]
• Religion, Education, and the Theoretically Liberral State: Contrasting Evangelical and Secularist Perspectives, 44 Journal of Catholic Studies 99 (2005) [19]
• Does Bioethics Provide Answers? Secular and Religious Bioethics and Our Procreative Future, 35 Cumberland Law Review 473 (2005).
• Nili Luo & David Smolin, Intercountry Adoption and China: Emerging Questions and Developing Chinese Perspectives, 35 Cumberland Law Review 597 (2005).
• The Two Faces of Intercountry Adoption: The Significance of the Indian Adoption Scandals, 35 Seton Hall Law Review 403 (2005) [20]
• Intercountry Adoption as Child Trafficking, 39 Valparaiso Law Review 281 (2005) [21] [22]
• A Tale of Two Treaties: Furthering Social Justice Through the Redemptive Myths of Childhood, Emory International Law Review, 17 Emory International Law Review 967 (2003).
• Nontherapeutic Research with Children: The Virtues and Vices of Legal Uncertainty, 33 Cumberland Law Review 621 (2003). [23]
• Should a Ban on Reproductive Cloning Include a Ban on Cloning for Purposes of Research or Therapy?, 32 Cumberland Law Review 487 (2002).
• Strategic Choices in the International Campaign Against Child Labor, 22 Human Rights Quarterly 942 (2000)
• Conflict and Ideology in the International Campaign Against Child Labour, 16 Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal 383 (1999)
• The Future of Genocide: A Spectacle for the New Millennium? 23 Fordham International Law Journal 460 (1999)
• Review, First Things (August/September 1999): 56-58.: The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory, Richard A. Posner (Belknap/Harvard University Press). [24]
• Will International Human Rights Be Used as a Tool of Cultural Genocide? The Interaction of Human Rights Norms, Religion, Culture and Gender, Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1995 - 1996), pp. 143-171.[25]

Conferences

• The Cultural Contexts of the Stem Cell Debate; Stem Cells: Diffusing the Rhetoric. North Carolina Central University School of Law, Durham, North Carolina, April 13, 2007. Sponsored by Durham's Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Law Institute and the North Carolina Research Campus.

Notable facts

• Smolin graduated first in his class and Order of the Coif from the University of Cincinnati College of Law.
• Smolin won Cumberland Law School's inaugural Lightfoot, Franklin & White Faculty Scholarship Award for the most significant scholarly work published during the preceding year for his paper Child Laundering published by Wayne Law Review. Co-winner was Professor Alyssa Di Russo for her paper.[26][27]
• The Smolin's adoption story was featured by National Public Radio titled Adoptions Stories Gone Bad. ^[14]
• His brother is quantum physicist Lee Smolin whose publications include the Life of the Cosmos, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, and The Trouble with Physics.
• His mother is the playwright Pauline Smolin, while his father Michael Smolin is an environmental and processes engineer.

Citations