Professor Kristin Nicole Henning

Kristin Henning is the Director of Juvenile Justice Clinic and Professor of Law at the Georgetown Law Center. She joined the faculty in 1995 as a Stuart-Stiller Fellow in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinics. As a Fellow, she represented adults and children in the D.C. Superior Court, while supervising law students in the Juvenile Justice Clinic.

In 1997, Professor Henning joined the staff of the Public Defender Service (PDS) for the District of Columbia where she continued to represent clients and helped to organize a Juvenile Unit designed to meet the multi-disciplinary needs of children in the juvenile justice system. Professor Henning served as Lead Attorney for the Juvenile Unit from 1998 until she left the Public Defender Service to return to Georgetown in 2001. As lead attorney, she represented juveniles in serious cases, supervised and trained new PDS attorneys, and coordinated and conducted training for court-appointed attorneys representing juveniles. 

Professor Henning has been active in local, regional and national juvenile justice reform, serving as Director of the Mid-Atlantic Juvenile Defender Center (MAJDC), President of the Board of Directors for the Center for Children’s Law and Policy, and on local D.C. Superior Court committees such as the Delinquency Working Group and the Family Court Training Committee. Professor Henning has also served as an expert consultant to a number of state and federal agencies, including the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

She has published a number of law review articles on race and the juvenile justice system, the role of child’s counsel and the role of parents in delinquency cases, confidentiality in juvenile proceedings, victims’ rights in juvenile court, and parental consent in the Fourth Amendment context.