Lois A.
Weithorn
Professor of Law and Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair
- Office 366-200
- Email Address weithorn@uchastings.edu
- Telephone (415) 565-4660
Biography
Lois A. Weithorn is a Professor of Law and the Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair. She joined the full-time UC Law SF faculty in 2001. She received the UC Law SF Foundation Faculty Scholarship Award in 2002, and the Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence in 2007. Professor Weithorn received her J.D. from Stanford Law School where she served as President of the Stanford Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. After graduating, she clerked for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed III of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit.
Professor Weithorn also has a Ph.D. in Psychology (University of Pittsburgh). Her work integrates perspectives in law and the behavioral and health sciences, with special emphasis on legal policies affecting family relationships or vulnerable or underserved groups such as children and persons with mental disorders. Professor Weithorn’s scholarship includes topics such as informed consent, health care decisionmaking capacity, and children’s participation in treatment decisions; legal responses to parental vaccine refusal; policies affecting youth crossing child welfare, juvenile justice and/or mental health system boundaries; developmental neuroscience and child protection policy reform; legal responses to children’s exposure to domestic violence; and intellectual disability and the death penalty. She also has served as a consultant to the Ethics and Policy Core at the Center for AIDS Prevention, UCSF Medical Center.
Prior to joining the faculty at UC Law SF, Professor Weithorn held positions at the University of Virginia (Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy and Department of Psychology). She served as a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, worked on federal mental health policy at the National Mental Health Association in Washington, D.C., and consulted with the Judicial Council of California and other agencies on child and family policy issues. Professor Weithorn also served on the Ethics Committee of the American Psychological Association and chaired several APA divisional committees relating to children and the law.
Expertise
Education
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Stanford Law School 1989
J.D., Law
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University of Pittsburgh 1980
Ph.D., Psychology
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Hamilton (Kirkland) College 1974
B.A., Psychology
Accomplishments
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President (Editor-in-Chief) 1989
Served as President of the Stanford Law Review
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Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence 2007
Awarded by University of California - Hastings College of the Law.
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Faculty Scholarship Award 2002
Awarded by UC Law SF Foundation.
Selected Scholarship
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Psychological Distress, Mental Disorder, and Assessment of Decisionmaking Capacity Under U.S. Physician Aid in Dying Statutes 2020
71 Hastings L.J. 637
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When Does A Minor’s Legal Competence to Make Health Care Decisions Matter? 2020
Pediatrics (Special Issue on Defining Cases in Pediatric Bioethics) S25-S52 146 (Supp 1.)
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Providing Adolescents with Independent and Confidential Access to Childhood Vaccines: A Proposal to Lower the Age of Consent 2020
(with D. Rubinstein Reiss), 52 Conn. L. Rev. 771
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Legal Approaches to Promoting Parental Compliance with Childhood Immunization Recommendations 2018
Human Vaccines & Immunotherapies
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A Constitutional Jurisprudence of Children’s Vulnerability 2017
UC Law SF Journal
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Responding to the Childhood Vaccination Crisis: Legal Frameworks and Tools in the Context of Parental Vaccine Refusal 2015
Buffalo Law Review
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Developmental Neuroscience, Children's Relationships with Primary Caregivers, and Child Protection Policy Reform 2012
Children's Relationships with Primary Caregivers, and Child Protection Policy Reform
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Conceptual Hurdles to the Application of Atkins v. Virgina 2008
UC Law SF Journal
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Envisioning second-order change in America's responses to troubled and troublesome youth 2005
Hofstra Law Review
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Protecting children from exposure to domestic violence: The use and abuse of child maltreatment statutes 2001
UC Law SF Journal