The Hidden Epidemic of Family Court Violence

MAJOR First Amendment and Constitutional Issues. 

Keynote address by famed Attorney Bruce Fein.

STRUCTURAL SUBSTANTIVE AND PROCEDURAL DEFICIENCIES THAT INVITE AN EPIDEMIC OF INJUSTICES

This major conference will be held in the Ballroom of the National Press Club on Tuesday, November 11, 2025, from 1 to 5 p.m. Eastern Time.  Afterward, there will be a buffet dinner in a side room.  Use Eventbrite to register and attend.

There is a deadly epidemic that is raging throughout the country, largely hidden from public view.  Family Courts, by virtue of an unchecked process, have become centers of systemic judicial misconduct, widespread injustices, and grave constitutional and human rights violations that have led to untold harm and devastation of millions of American families.

Celebrated constitutional and human rights attorney, Bruce Fein, Esq., will give the keynote address.  Acclaimed forensic psychiatrist, public health advocate, and chief medical officer of the Institute of Forensic Science, Bandy Lee, M.D., is organizing the event.  Speakers and participants will be coming from all over the country, including key state legislators, journalists, medical and legal experts, and former child victims of Family Court.

The Conference aims to lay the foundation for Congressional and State legislative hearings into the structural flaws that invite if not guarantee Family Court abuses or injustices: blanket secrecy; flagrantly unconstitutional gag orders and prior restraints; routine violations of due process; the use of poorly-trained or unqualified “experts”; judicial incompetence; and a lack of legislative oversight, including impeachment and removal from office for judicial misconduct.  The goal is a Uniform Family Court Code for consideration by all 50 States and the District of Columbia.

This event is sponsored by the Institute of Forensic Science, an organization dedicated to introducing medical rigor to Family Court proceedings.

Bruce Fein, Esq., since graduating with honors from Harvard Law School, has served at the highest levels of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government before establishing his own law firm.  Among other things, Mr. Fein served as special assistant to the assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, assistant director of the office of legal policy, associate deputy attorney general, general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, research director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran, and clerk to federal Judge Frank A. Kaufman.  He featured on Attorney General William French Smith’s short-list of potential nominees to the United States Supreme Court.  His unique network extends to all three branches of the government, the media, think tanks, universities, and a cluster of NGOs.  He is vice chairman of the Committee for the Republic.  He is author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy and American Empire before the Fall.  Mr. Fein served as senior policy advisor to Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign.  He has testified as an expert witness before Congress on more than 200 occasions.  He served on the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements.  He has been a newspaper columnist, professor at George Washington University, and visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute.  Mr. Fein has assisted multiple countries in writing or rewriting constitutions.  He specializes in constitutional, international law, civil liberties, and administrative law.

Bandy Lee, M.D., has served as an expert witness in over 70 Family Court cases across more than 30 U.S. states.  She has testified before 9 state legislatures on abuses in Family Court, the latest of which are here:

• Dr. Lee’s Arizona Testimony 
• Dr. Lee’s Idaho Testimony

Before her involvement with the Family Courts, Dr. Lee had a career spanning two decades as a forensic psychiatrist and violence scholar.  After her medical education at Yale and Harvard Universities, she was a fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health, a consultant to the World Health Organization, president of the World Mental Health Coalition, and cofounder of the Violence Prevention Institute.  She taught at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School for 17 years before joining the Harvard Program in Psychiatry and the Law.  She consulted with city, state, and national governments on criminal justice reform and community violence prevention.  In 2002, she assisted in the WHO’s launch of its World Report on Violence and Health.  In 2007, she coauthored the UN Secretary-General’s chapter on “Violence against Children.”  In 2013, she coauthored an expert report on Rikers Island Correctional Facility that brought in federal investigators and initiated reforms.  In 2024, she was invited by the governor of New York to help reform the state’s 44 prisons.  She authored an authoritative textbook, Violence, 17 scholarly volumes, over 100 scientific articles, and more than 300 opinion articles in the most influential news outlets.  She specializes in treating violent offenders.