VADJJ Board of Directors member, Patricia Puritz, was named the was named the American Bar Association’s Livingston Hall Award. In addition to serving on the VADJJ Board, Puritz is the Executive Director f the National juvenile Defender Center.
ABA Juvenile Justice Committee established the Livingston Hall Juvenile Justice Award in 1985 to recognize lawyers practicing in the juvenile delinquency field who have demonstrated a high degree of skill, commitment, and professionalism in representing their young clients. Realizing that juvenile justice is too often overlooked, the Committee annually honors a lawyer who has positively and significantly contributed to the field and the children it serves.
The award is named in honor and in memory of Livingston Hall, a leader in the juvenile justice field and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. As an early chair of the Committee, Hall was instrumental in securing ABA approval of the comprehensive Juvenile Justice Standards. This 24-volume set of black letter standards and commentary are as relevant and useful today as they were when first developed over ten years ago.
