Served as President of the Stanford Law Review

President (Editor-in-Chief)

Awarded by University of California - Hastings College of the Law.

Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence

Faculty Scholarship Award

American Journal of Orthopsychiatry : Editorial Board

Psychology  Public Policy and Law (Journal) : Editorial Board

American Psychological Association : Fellow

Responding to the Childhood Vaccination Crisis: Legal Frameworks and Tools in the Context of Parental Vaccine Refusal

Developmental Neuroscience, Children's Relationships with Primary Caregivers, and Child Protection Policy Reform

Conceptual Hurdles to the Application of Atkins v. Virgina

Envisioning second-order change in America's responses to troubled and troublesome youth

Protecting children from exposure to domestic violence: The use and abuse of child maltreatment statutes

Psychology and Child Custody Determinations: Knowledge, Roles, and Expertise (Children and the Law)

The is a brand new Abridged Edition of the very popular Family Law: Cases, Text, Problems. Family law is an interdisciplinary area, and the materials in this Abridged Fifth Edition reflect the numerous components, influences, and issues under the family law umbrella. The traditional version served a dual role as reference work and teaching tool. Users will find that this new abridged edition better serves the teaching function. The reduction in length has been achieved without changing the book's basic orientation.This book is policy-oriented, with non-legal social science adressed in note materials to provide a rich and varied learning experience. Notes do more than call attention to difficult questions of legal doctrine and policy; they illuminate them. The authors use a problem approach throughout, in addition to comprehensive case law sources. Problems provide an ideal mechanism for students to acquire the ability to apply legal rules to concrete fact patterns.

Family Law: Cases, Text, Problems (2014)

This Edition has been thoroughly updated with the latest cases, statutory references, and scholarly commentary. It also includes coverage of recent Supreme Court decisions such as:   Miller v. Alabama/Jackson v. Hobbs (2012), in which the Court held that mandatory imposition of a sentence of life without parole in the case of one who was a juvenile at the time of the offense violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment  Graham v. Florida (2010), Miller’s predecessor, in which the Court held that imposition of a sentence of LWOP on a juvenile for a nonhomicide offense violated the Eighth Amendment  Florida v. Harris (2013), in which the Court, although in an adult, non-school search context, held that an alert by a trained, drug-sniffing dog constitutes a presumption of probable cause to search  J.D.B. v. North Carolina (2011), in which the Court held that a juvenile’s age is a factor that can be taken into account in determining whether one is “in custody” for Miranda and interrogation purposes  Stafford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding (2009), in which the Court held that a strip search of a 13-year-old middle school student violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure  Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl (2013), in which the Court held that the preferences given to members of an Indian child’s family, members of the child’s tribe, or other Indian families, under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, do not apply where there is no alternative party seeking to adopt the child.  The 5th edition has retained the basic overall organizational structure of the previous edition, with one exception. Chapters 5 through 7, which focus on the legal response to child maltreatment, have been reorganized as follows: Chapter 5 addresses the substantive standards defining child abuse or neglect; Chapter 6 deals with processes characterizing the responses of the dependency and criminal justice systems to suspected child abuse or neglect; and Chapter 7 addresses various dispositions in child maltreatment cases. Within each chapter, substantial new material has been incorporated into the treatment of each topic. For example, Chapter 5 includes special attention to issues such as: specificity versus vagueness in construction of child maltreatment statutes; the line between corporal punishment and physical abuse; the relationships among poverty, race, homelessness, and neglect; the challenges of defining and identifying emotional or psychological maltreatment; and the interplay between domestic violence and child maltreatment. At the same time, Chapter 5 retains and updates this casebook’s distinctive in-depth examination of the appropriate legal responses to a range of medical neglect problems. Chapter 6 follows the processing of cases through the dependency and criminal justice systems respectively, examining topics relating to reporting statutes, summary removal, state liability for failure to protect, and constitutional and evidentiary issues encountered in criminal prosecution of alleged child maltreatment. Chapter 7 examines historical shifts in federal and state policy regarding child welfare system dispositional alternatives, considers the implications of the recent findings of developmental neuroscience for child protection policy reform, and contains materials that allow for critical analysis of a range of issues relating to the foster care system and legal mechanisms for the termination of parental rights. One of the distinguishing characteristics of this book, which the authors have retained in this edition, is its breadth of coverage and degree of flexibility in teaching. It deals with every aspect of how the law relates to minors, from free expression in school and other school-related issues to child custody, to private law (e.g.. torts and contracts), to the juvenile justice system (i.e., delinquency and the operation

Children in the Legal System (University Casebook Series)

UC Hastings College of the Law was founded in 1878 as the first law department of the University of California, and today is one of the top-rated law schools in the United States. Our alumni span the globe and are among the most respected lawyers, judges and business leaders today. Our faculty are nationally renowned as both teachers and scholars.

UC Hastings College of the Law

Family Law

Bioethics, Law & Healthcare Decisionmaking Seminar

Children and the Law

Mental Health Law & Policy Course

Criminal Law

Professor Weithorn joined the full-time UC Hastings faculty in 2001.  She received the UC Hastings 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 science, with special emphasis on legal policies affecting family relationships or vulnerable or underserved groups (such as children and persons with mental and emotional disabilities).  Professor Weithorn’s scholarship includes topics such as the law and ethics of informed consent for treatment and research; 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; intellectual disability and the death penalty; California’s Proposition 8 and same-sex marriage.  She also serves 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 Hastings, 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.

Bioethics and the Law

Mental Health Law

Social Science and Law

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

Law Review Articles on SSRN

CALIFORNIA / Spank a little kid, go to jail, if bill becomes law / Critics blast effort as intrusive and difficult to enforce

Mandatory Vaccination Policies: Legal Justifications and Challenges

The Evolution of Legal Policies Governing Vaccination of Children: Controversies and Challenges

Children’s Mental Health and the Mental Health “Non-System” 

Same-Sex Marriage and US Supreme Court: Oral Argument and Panel Discussion

Parental Refusal of Childhood Vaccinations: Trends, Consequences and Legal Policy Reponses,

Professor of Law, Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair

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