Robert Schwartz (Bob) 1949-2024
Bob was a Visiting Scholar at Temple University Beasley School of Law and co-founded the Juvenile Law Center in Pennsylvania in 1975 and was its executive director from 1982 to 2015.
Bob represented dependent and delinquent children in Pennsylvania juvenile and appellate courts; brought class-action litigation over institutional conditions and probation functions; testified in Congress before House and Senate committees; and spoken in over 30 states on matters related to children and the law.
Bob’s career involved fighting nationally and internationally for children’s rights. He chaired the American Bar Association's Commission on Youth at Risk from 2011-2013. From 1992-98 and 2006-08 he served as chair of the Juvenile Justice Committee of the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section, and in 1995 he helped author a follow-up report on youths’ access to quality lawyers, A Call for Justice. In 1993 Bob visited South Africa to help develop a legal system for children, and was invited to China in 2010 to speak to judges and lawyers about sentencing of youth. Bob visited China again in 2018, speaking at a symposium sponsored by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute. He co-edited the 2020 RWI volume, The Role of Social Work in Juvenile Justice: International Perspectives.
From 1996-2006 Bob was a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. In 2005 he became chair of the Advisory Committee to the Children's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.
Bob passed away in October 2024. You can read his obituary here.
As a long-time friend and advisor of YJLC, Bob will be missed greatly.