Keynote Speaker

Michelle Oberman (Santa Clara)

Michelle Oberman is a graduate of the University of Michigan Schools of Law and Public Health. She is Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law, where she specializes in the area of health policy and the law, with particular emphasis on the intersection of women’s health, poverty, criminal law and public health issues.

A former chair of the American Association of Law School’s Section on Law and Medicine, Professor Oberman lectures to a broad set of audiences, including legal, medical, undergraduate and community-based interest groups. In addition to her academic experience, Professor Oberman maintains an affiliation with a variety of health care organizations, and has served on the Institutional Review Board of Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and the Board of Directors of the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group. She served as a community representative on the University of California at San Francisco Campus Committee on Gamete, Embryo, and Stem Cell Research (GESCR) (2005-2008).

As a legal scholar with a background in public health, Professor Oberman’s research focuses on legal and ethical issues relating to adolescence, sexuality, pregnancy and motherhood. In recent years, she has written about statutory rape, postpartum mental health issues and the law, filicide, substance abuse by pregnant women, and the fiduciary obligations of health care providers to their patients. In addition to teaching in the area of health law, Professor Oberman teaches both Criminal Law and Contracts. Her current research employs ethnographic methodology in search of a deeper cross-cultural understanding of issues involving women’s health and the law.