Robert (Bob) Schwartz currently serves as the Phyllis W. Beck Chair in Law at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law. Prior to this role, Bob was the Stoneleigh Foundation’s inaugural Visiting Fellow from 2016-2017, providing strategic advising to Stoneleigh and Emerging Leader Fellows on project implementation and career development. During his Fellowship, Bob also wrote a monograph entitled Youth on Probation: Bringing a 20th Century Service into a Developmentally Friendly 21st Century World, in which he outlines a framework and identifies a set of guiding principles for juvenile probation reform.
Bob co-founded Juvenile Law Center (JLC) in 1975 and served as its Executive Director from 1982 to 2015. During his career at JLC, he 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 spoke in more than thirty states on matters related to children and the law. Bob’s distinguished career has not been limited to Pennsylvania – it also includes fighting nationally and internationally for youth rights.
He has held numerous leadership roles, including chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Youth at Risk and chair of the Juvenile Justice Committee of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section. He also co-authored the American Bar Association’s report America’s Children at Risk and helped author a follow-up report, A Call for Justice, on youth access to quality lawyers. Bob was a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. As part of the Network, he co-edited Youth on Trial: A Developmental Perspective on Juvenile Justice. From 1991 to 2012, he was a gubernatorial appointee to the Commission’s Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Committee, which is the state advisory group that distributes federal funds in Pennsylvania and advises the governor on juvenile justice policy.
Bob holds a BA in sociology and philosophy from Haverford College and a JD from Temple University Beasley School of Law.
