Sacha M. Coupet

Professor Coupet joined the Loyola law faculty in 2004. Her research focuses on the regulation of families, including the privileges, rights and interests of those within the family. Her scholarship on policy and practice issues in child and family welfare have been published in, among other journals, The Michigan State Law Review, American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law and the New York University Review of Law & Social Change. Together with Prof. Ellen Marrus (Houston), Prof. Coupet is the editor of Children, Sexuality and the Law (NYU Press, 2015), a groundbreaking book that contributes greatly to the dialogue about children’s agency. Prof. Coupet presents nationally on issues related to family law, child welfare, children’s rights, LGBTQ youth and diversity and inclusion in law practice. Her research aims to incorporate empirical inquiry into legal discourse with a particular emphasis on the use of social science in the development of law and policy.

Prior to joining the law school, Professor Coupet received her Ph.D. in Psychology (Clinical) from the University of Michigan, serving, while in graduate school, as a psychological consultant to the Michigan Child Welfare Law Resource Center, the Child Advocacy Law Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School, county juvenile court and state human service departments. While at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, as a James Wilson Fellow, she continued her psychological consulting practice and served as an Associate Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. She clerked for the Honorable Theodore A. McKee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, and then for the Honorable Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. Immediately prior to joining Loyola’s faculty, Professor Coupet was a Dean's Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School, where she taught for two years in the Child Advocacy Law Clinic. She continues to teach in the University of Michigan Law School’s Bergstrom Child Welfare Summer Fellowship Training program and is a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Houston Law Center, Center for Children, Law and Policy. In 2006, Professor Coupet co-founded the AALS Section on Children & the Law and currently serves as Chair-Elect of the AALS Section on Poverty Law. In 2011, Professor Coupet served as the Reporter for the American Association of Matrimonial Lawyers, Child Custody Evaluation Standards.