Sarah Boonin

Biography

Sarah Boonin is the Associate Dean for Experiential Learning and a Clinical Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School. As Associate Dean, she oversees Suffolk’s nationally recognized Clinical Programs, Externship Program, and Legal Writing Program. Additionally, she oversees all moot court, trial advocacy, and dispute resolution programs, as well as simulation courses. She served as the founder and director of Suffolk’s Health Law Clinic (HLC) from 2010 to June 2025. In the HLC, she supervised law students in representing low-income clients in a range of disability-related and health law matters, including adult guardianships and alternatives to guardianships, Social Security disability and other benefits cases, health insurance appeals, and medical debt cases. Dean Boonin teaches legal ethics and reproductive health law and has taught comparative mental health and disability law. She has written on topics related to disability and health law, marriage equality, reproductive rights, and law practice technology. Her writing has been featured in the Havard Journal of Law & Gender, Women and the Law (Thomson Reuters), the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, Ms. Magazine, and the Huffington Post. She’s presented at numerous conferences and events on topics including disability law, reproductive rights, and clinical legal education and pedagogy.

Dean Boonin has been an active member of the national clinical community, serving on the planning committees for regional Clinical Conferences, two national Clinical Conferences, helping to organize a working group of experiential deans and directors, and most recently is serving on the Board and research team for the Center for Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE). She has also served on a range of boards and working groups focused on adult guardianship reform, including the Advisory Council of the Massachusetts Guardianship Association (MGA), the Guardianship Alternatives and Initiatives Network of the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council, and the Advisory Board of the Sexual Assault Response Unit of the Disabled Persons Protection Commission.

Prior to joining the faculty at Suffolk, Dean Boonin served as a Skadden Fellow and later a Clinical Fellow at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School. Sarah clerked at the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Professor Boonin holds her B.A. magna cum laude from Duke University and her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School.

Education

• BA, Duke University
• JD, Harvard University

Selected Publications

Articles 

• From Pandemic to Pedagogy: Law Clinics Embrace Technology, 68 Wash. U. J. Law & Pol’y (2022), with Luz Herrera
• Ten Years Too Long: How Social Security's Marriage Duration Requirement Gambles with Women's Lives, 39 HARV. J. L. & GENDER 369 (2016). 

Book Chapters

• Marriage is Marriage, republished in 50 YEARS OF MS. MAGAZINE (Knopf Publishing, 2021).
• Ten Years Too Long - How Social Security’s Marriage Duration Requirement Gambles with Women’s Lives, re-printed as Chapter 14 in Women and the Law (Thomson Reuters 2018). 

Media

• I’m an Adult with Autism. I Built a Team to Help me Make Decisions, COGNOSCENTI, WBUR, Jan. 18, 2024, available at: https://perma.cc/QM7K-EWSS (assisted/co-authored with Jonathan Gardner).
• The Confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett – and the End of Roe as We Know It, Ms. Magazine Online, Oct. 21, 2020 
• A Brief Respite for Abortion Rights: The Supreme Court’s Decision in June Medical Services Holds the Line on Abortion – for Now, MS. MAGAZINE (Fall 2020).
• Think Abortion Rights Are Safe Now? Maybe Not, COGNOSCENTI, WBUR, Jul. 1, 2020
• June Medical Services: A Precarious Victory, MS. MAGAZINE ONLINE, June 30, 2020
• June v. Russo: Is it Really the End of Roe? How Did it Come to This? MS. MAGAZINE ONLINE, Mar. 4, 2020
• As the Supreme Court Revisits Roe v. Wade, Prepare for the Ravage of Abortion Rights, Cognoscenti, WBUR, Mar. 4, 2020
• Justices Side with Women: Whole Woman’s Health is a Major – Though Tenuous – Victory for Abortion Rights, MS. MAGAZINE (Summer 2016).
• I Do – Now What? Marriage Equality’s Next Frontier, MS. MAGAZINE, Summer 2015 (co-authored with Janson Wu).
• Dear Supreme Court, Our Daughter is Watching, THE HUFFINGTON POST, 06/25/15.
• The 88 Percent: The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby Decision Threatens All Contraception, MS. MAGAZINE (Fall 2014).
• What Equality Really Means After Windsor, THE HUFFINGTON POST, 08/15/13.
• Marriage is Marriage: How the Supreme Court’s Repeal of DOMA Changed our Lives, MS. MAGAZINE (Summer 2013).
• A Law Professor's Perspective on the Supreme Court's DOMA Case, THE HUFFINGTON POST, 06/28/13.

Honors and Awards

• Best Zoom Professor, Suffolk Law School Student Body Award, May 2021
• Meg Connolly MVP Award from Senior Partners for Justice and the Volunteer Lawyers Project in November 2016
• Champion for Social Change Award by the Suffolk Law School Student Bar Association in 2016
• Health Law Attorney of the Month by Health Law Advocates in April 2015
• Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly's Up and Coming Lawyer in 2010

Bar Admittance

• Massachusetts