Merle Weiner

Philip H. Knight Professor of Law

Professor Weiner has taught Civil Procedure, Domestic Abuse Law, Family Law, Children and the Law, International and Comparative Family Law, Torts, Civil Procedure, and Adjudication and Courts.

Merle Weiner graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College. There she won the Keasbey Memorial Foundation Scholarship, an award granting two years study at Cambridge University, and the Hannah T. Croasdale Award, for most improving the quality of life for Dartmouth women. At Cambridge University, Professor Weiner earned an LL.M. with First Class Honors. She then attended Harvard Law School, and obtained her J.D. cum laude. At Harvard, Professor Weiner was the co-chair of the Women's Law Association, and was an editor on the Harvard Women's Law Journal.

After law school, Professor Weiner clerked for Chief Justice Jay Rabinowitz of the Alaska Supreme Court. She was awarded a Women's Law & Public Policy Fellowship, which allowed her to supervise law students in the Sex Discrimination Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. She also practiced securities litigation with Sherman & Sterling in the firm's San Francisco office from 1992-1995. Professor Weiner began teaching at the University of Iowa College of Law, where she taught Family Law, Family Law in the World Community, and Domestic Abuse Law. Professor Weiner is admitted to practice law in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and California.

Professor Weiner recently finished an article on international family law for the Family Law Quarterly's Fiftieth Anniversary Issue and an article on the U.S.'s performance at an internatioinal meeting on child abduction. Professor Weiner is currently preparing the second edition of the casebook Family Law in the World Community, and she is writing a book entitled The Status of Parent-Partner. She is scheduled to speak to the National Association of Women Judges in September.

Since 2005, Professor Weiner has presented papers at the International Society of Family Law's world conference, the Association of American Law School's annual conference, and at Seattle University School of Law's Hague Convention Symposium. She has trained judges on international child abduction for the National Conference of Juvenile and Family State Court Judges, has served as an expert witness in cases involving international child abduction, and has served as an observer for the drafting of the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act. She attended the Special Session to Review the Operation of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction in the fall 2007 as a delegate of the International Society of Family Law. She presented her paper, The Status of Parent-Partner, at the January 2008 AALS Annual Meeting after the Family and Juvenile Law Section selected it for presentation.

Professor Weiner enjoys spending her free time with her husband and her two sons.