Jennifer Dunn

Adjunct Professor Jennifer Templeton Dunn is the Acting Assistant Dean for the Graduate Division at UC Hastings College of the Law.  Professor Dunn served as the Executive Director of the UCSF/Hastings Consortium on Law, Science and Health Policy from 2009-2012 and became the Acting Assistant Dean for the Graduate Division in 2012.  Prior to joining UC Hastings, she served as the Law & Policy Advisor for Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a collaborative research group and “think tank” at the University of California, San Francisco. 

Licensed in California and New York, Professor Dunn began her legal career at a plaintiffs' class action law firm where she litigated health care and civil rights cases in state and federal courts throughout the country. As a litigation associate, she represented plaintiffs in Abdullahi v. Pfizer, a mass tort alleging Pfizer violated international law in conducting a clinical trial of the antibiotic Trovan without first obtaining the consent of the children or their parents.  Other representative cases include class action lawsuits against insurance companies alleging racial discrimination in the sale of life insurance policies, a class action challenging an employer’s denial of health insurance coverage for prescription contraceptives, and multidistrict litigation against health maintenance organizations (HMOs).  

Professor Dunn teaches in the area of women’s health and reproductive justice.  She was appointed as an adjunct at UC Hastings in the Fall of 2010, and previously taught Women’s Health and the Law as a Lecturer at UC Berkeley Law.  Throughout her career, Professor Dunn has remained an unwavering champion of women's rights and fought for accessible, affordable health care and the elimination of discrimination. Her research interests include the history and current implications of "physician-only" abortion laws; the use of science in determining state and national health policy; and the implications of forced obstetrical interventions on maternal morbidity and personal autonomy. Her book, Abortion in California: A Medical-Legal Handbook, is co-authored with UCSF faculty in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences.