David M. Smolin

David M. Smolin

David Mark Smolin is a professor of law at Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama where he is the Harwell G. Davis Chair in Constitutional Law, the director for Cumberland School of Law's Center for Biotechnology, Law, and Ethics, and faculty advisor for the Law, Science and Technology Society.

Smolin is one of the world's leading academic experts on international adoption scandals (see child laundering) and the creator of an informational website on international adoption called Adopting Internationally. He has been interviewed and submitted content on the subject to a wide variety of news outlets across the world including National Public Radio, ABC News, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The Salt Lake Tribune, CBC Radio, and Radio Netherlands to name a few.

He recently presented on adoption issues at the Korean Women’s Development Institute in Seoul, Korea; the Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies in Seoul, Korea; and (as an independent expert) at the Hague Special Commission on the Practical Operation of the Hague Adoption Convention.

His law review article, Child Laundering, written in 2005, won Cumberland's inaugural Lightfoot, Franklin and White Faculty Scholarship Award for the most significant scholarly work published during the preceding year, and is consistently listed in the 10 Most Popular Articles in the bepress Legal Series.

His own family's international adoption, discovery that their children were stolen, and ultimately successful, though arduous, six year search for the girls' original birth family in India was featured on NPR's Morning Edition titled Adoption Stories Gone Bad, and by ABC News.