The legalities of same sex marriage, adoption rights and domestic violence are among the issues to be discussed by some of the nations top legal minds at a March 2-3 family law conference at West Virginia University.

This conference brings together several of the countrys top legal minds to talk about some of the most hotly debated issues currently making headlines,said Lisa Kelly, WVU law professor and conference planner.

Many of these issues are especially relevant,she said,because the U.S. Supreme Court is currently hearing two cases that will potentially affect family law in significant ways.

The firstTroxel vs. Granvilleconcerns the rights of grandparents to visit their grandchildren, she said. The secondBrzonkala vs. Virginia Polytechnic Institutepertains to a gang rape and will test the controversial Violence Against Women Act.

Supreme Court decisions in both cases are apt to be decided in February or March and will definitely spark additional and timely debate at the conference, Kelly noted.

Among the scheduled speakers are Katharine T. Bartlett, dean of law at Duke University, and Sally Goldfarb, a domestic violence expert from Rutgers University.

Professor Barlett has served as reporter for the American Law Institute’s Principles Governing the Allocation of Custodial and Decision�€making Responsibility for Children. Bartlett earned her law degree from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.

Goldfarb, who graduated from Yale Law School in 1982, is perhaps best known as an attorney for the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund and for helping to draft and pass the Violence Against Women Act.

She also will give this year’s Donley Lecture at WVU during the upcoming conference.

Other speakers will include Karen Czapanskiy and Mark Strasser, both from the University of Maryland School of Law; Associate Professor Theresa Glennon, Temple University School of Law; and Raymond OBrien, Catholic University.

Another talk may be of particular interest to statewide and national law makers, Kelly said, when the lawyers in the hotly debated Kessel v. Leavitt case will discuss the outcome of that nationally noted suit.

The case, which took place recently in a small southern West Virginia town, involved a woman who gave up her newborn son without telling the father of the child, whom she was not married to or living with at the time, Kelly explained.

Despite allegations of possible domestic abuse that prompted the woman to hide her pregnancy, the father won the $8 million suit and set legal precedence, she added.

The conference is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the WVU College of Law, the West Virginia Law Review, the Edward G. Donley Memorial Lecture Series and the Women’s Law Caucus.

For more information, call Lisa Kelly, 304-293-7040, or register at the website:http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/lkelly/