Lois Weithorn
Professor of Law and Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair
- Office: 366-200
- Email: weithorn@uclawsf.edu
- Phone: (415) 565-4660
Bio
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.
Education
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Stanford Law School
J.D., Law 1989 -
University of Pittsburgh
Ph.D., Psychology 1980 -
Hamilton (Kirkland) College
B.A., Psychology 1974
Accomplishments
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President (Editor-in-Chief)
Served as President of the Stanford Law Review 1989 -
Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence
Awarded by University of California - Hastings College of the Law. 2007 -
Faculty Scholarship Award
Awarded by UC Law SF Foundation. 2002
Selected Scholarship
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Psychological Distress, Mental Disorder, and Assessment of Decisionmaking Capacity Under U.S. Physician Aid in Dying Statutes
71 Hastings L.J. 637 2020 -
When Does A Minor’s Legal Competence to Make Health Care Decisions Matter?
Pediatrics (Special Issue on Defining Cases in Pediatric Bioethics) S25-S52 146 (Supp 1.) 2020 -
Providing Adolescents with Independent and Confidential Access to Childhood Vaccines: A Proposal to Lower the Age of Consent
(with D. Rubinstein Reiss), 52 Conn. L. Rev. 771 2020 -
Legal Approaches to Promoting Parental Compliance with Childhood Immunization Recommendations
Human Vaccines & Immunotherapies 2018 -
A Constitutional Jurisprudence of Children’s Vulnerability
UC Law SF Journal 2017 -
Responding to the Childhood Vaccination Crisis: Legal Frameworks and Tools in the Context of Parental Vaccine Refusal
Buffalo Law Review 2015 -
Developmental Neuroscience, Children's Relationships with Primary Caregivers, and Child Protection Policy Reform
Children's Relationships with Primary Caregivers, and Child Protection Policy Reform 2012 -
Conceptual Hurdles to the Application of Atkins v. Virgina
UC Law SF Journal 2008 -
Envisioning second-order change in America's responses to troubled and troublesome youth
Hofstra Law Review 2005 -
Protecting children from exposure to domestic violence: The use and abuse of child maltreatment statutes
UC Law SF Journal 2001