Faculty Directory
  • Faculty

Susan B. Apel

Titles

  • Professor of Law Emerita

Degrees

  • JD, Northeastern University, Boston, 1977
  • BA, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 1974

Contact

Biography

Professor Susan B. Apel is recognized for her work in family law and gender issues, including child custody, assisted reproductive technology, and abortion. She created and taught a seminar on medical/legal issues and reproduction held at the Dartmouth Medical School, where she has been an adjunct professor since 1998. Classes include students from Vermont Law School and Dartmouth Medical School.

Professor Apel earned her BA degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1974 and her JD degree from Northeastern University School of Law in 1977. After receiving her law degree, she became staff attorney and co-director of Keystone Legal Services in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. She joined the Vermont Law School faculty in 1982, serving as staff attorney and co-director of the South Royalton Legal Clinic from 1982 to 1987. She had been associate director of the General Practice Program, which integrates substantive law and professional skills, since 1988 and assumed the directorship from 2001 to 2014. Her 1989 article, “Custodial Parents, Child Sexual Abuse, and the Legal System: Beyond Contempt,” was cited by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during hearings on child sexual abuse and by the U.S. Senate Committee for Government Affairs in enacting the District of Columbia Civil Contempt Imprisonment Limitation Act of 1989. She presented “Bringing Theater Techniques to the Classroom” at the Association of American Law Schools’ Conference on New Ideas for Experienced Teachers in Calgary, Alberta, in 2001, and presented “Gender and Invisible Work Revisited” at Harvard Law School in 2002. She was a charter member of the advisory committee to the Institute for Law School Teaching at Gonzaga University School of Law.

More recently, Professor Apel was a guest blogger on Gender and Law blog, has been a contributor to the Bioethics Forum, the Shriver Report, and is concentrating on writing op-eds and creative non-fiction.

Expertise

  • Clinical Legal Education
  • Domestic Relations
  • Family Law and Adoption
  • Gender and the Law
  • Legal Education
  • Reproductive Rights
  • Science and the Law

Courses Taught

  • Family Law
  • GPP: Domestic Relations
  • Independent Research Project
  • MedLaw: Issues of Reproduction and Family