Elyn Saks
USC Gould School of Law

Elyn Saks is Orrin B. Evans Distinguished Professor of Law, Professor of Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the USC Gould School of Law; Director of the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics; Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the UC San Diego, School of Medicine; and Faculty at the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She served as USC Gould's associate dean for research from 2005-2010 and also teaches at the Keck School of Medicine. Saks received her JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in Psychoanalytic Science from the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree (LLD, Hon) from Pepperdine University.

Saks writes extensively in the area of law and mental health, having published five books and more than fifty articles and book chapters. Her research has included the ethical dimensions of psychiatric research and forced treatment of people with mental illness. Her memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, describes her struggles with schizophrenia and her managing to craft a good life for herself in the face of a dire prognosis. She has won numerous honors, including a 2009 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (the so-called “Genius Grant”).

In fall 2010, she announced she was using funds from the MacArthur Fellowship to create the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at USC, a think tank that studies issues at the intersection of law, mental health, and ethics. The Institute spotlights one important mental health issue per academic year and is a collaborative effort that has included faculty and graduate students from several USC departments: law, psychiatry, psychology, social work, philosophy, neuroscience, gerontology, and engineering.

In addition the The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (Hyperion, 2007), other books include Informed Consent to Psychoanalysis: The Law, the Theory, and the Data (Fordham University Press, 2013), Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the Rights of the Mentally Ill (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Interpreting Interpretation: The Limits of Hermeneutic Psychoanalysis (Yale University Press, 1999), and Jekyll on Trial: Multiple Personality Disorder and Criminal Law (New York University Press, 1997).

Before joining the USC Gould faculty in 1989, Saks was an attorney in Connecticut and instructor at the University of Bridgeport School of Law. She graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University before earning her master of letters from Oxford University and her JD from Yale, where she edited the Yale Law Journal. Saks is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 2013, she was appointed by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services to a three-year term on the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) National Advisory Council. She also serves as a board member of Mental Health Advocacy Services, Bring Change 2 Mind, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, and the Burton Blatt Institute. In 2004, she won both the Associate’s Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship and the Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award.
 

Works in Progress

• Competency to Consent to Treatment and/or Research: New Directions (under contract with University of Chicago Press)
• “Retributive Constraints on the Concept of Competency: The Required Role of ‘Patently False Beliefs’ in Understanding Competency to be Executed.” (in press at Behavioral Sciences and the Law)
• “Informed Consent to Research” (with Stephen H. Behnke). (to be published in American Psychologist)
• “Some Ethical Dimensions in Longitudinal Research” (with Lissy Jarvick)
• “Some Misconceptions about the ‘Therapeutic Misconception’” (with Barton Palmer and Dilip V. Jeste)
• “Informed Consent to Psychoanalysis” (empirical project)
• “Competency to Refuse Treatment: An Empirical Study of Judges’ Understanding of this Concept in California, Massachusetts, and New York” (empirical project)

Books

• Informed Consent to Psychoanalysis: The Law, The Theory, and The Data (with Shahrokh Golshan) (Fordham University Press, 2013).
• The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (Hyperion, 2007).
• Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the Rights of the Mentally Ill (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
• Interpreting Interpretation: The Limits of Hermeneutic Psychoanalysis (Yale University Press, 1999).
• Jekyll on Trial: Multiple Personality Disorder and Criminal Law (with Stephen H. Behnke) (New York University Press, 1997).

Articles and Book Chapters

• “Improving Classification of Psychoses" (with Stephen M. Lawrie et al). 3 Lancet Psychiatry 367 (2016).
• “Towards Diagnostic Markers for the Psychoses" (with Stephen M. Lawrie et al). 3 Lancet Psychiatry 375 (2016).
• “Transitioning Into College with a Mental Health Disorder: Beginnings.” 18 Quinnipiac Health Law Journal 325 (2016).
• “Ethical, Legal, and Clinical Considerations when Disclosing a High-Risk Syndrome for Psychosis” (with Vijay A. Mittal et al). 29 Bioethics 543 (2015).
• “Psychosis, Pain, and Time: A Personal Reflection.” 72 American Imago 321 (2015).
• “The Status of Status Offenses: Helping Reverse the Criminalization of Mental Illness.” 23 Southern California Review of Law & Social Justice 367 (Spring 2014).
• “Forcible Medication of Civil Committees: The Most Appropriate Standard.” 2 Mental Health Law & Policy Journal 233 (2013).
• “Competency to Refuse Medication: Revisiting the Role of Denial of Mental Illness in Capacity Determinations.” 22 Southern California Review of Law & Social Justice 167 (2013).
• "A Conversation between Roburt A. Burt and Elyn R. Saks about Saks’ book, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness" (with Roburt A. Burt) (in press at American Imago).
• "Retributive Constraints on the Concept of Competency: The Required Role of 'Patently False Beliefs' in Understanding Competency to be Executed" (in press at Behavioral Sciences and the Law).
• "The Politics of Mental Illness: A Professor’s Story, Going Public After Tenure." 19 The American Prospect 7 (2008).
• "Commentary: The Importance of Accommodations in Higher Education." 59 Psychiatric Services 376 (2008).
• "Meta-Consent in Research on Decisional Capacity: A 'Catch-22?'" (with Laura B. Dunn and Barton W. Palmer). 32 Schizophrenia Bulletin 42.
• "Proxy Consent to Research: The Legal Landscape" (with Laura B. Dunn, Jessica Wimer, Michael Gonzales and Scott Kim). 8 Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 37 (2008). - (Hein)
• "Decisional Capacity to Consent to Research in Psychosis: An Analysis of Errors" [abstract] (with A. R. Kaup, Barton W. Palmer and Laura B. Dunn). 14 Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 117 (2008).
• "Prevalence and Correlates of Adequate Performance on a Measure of Abilities Related to Decisional Capacity: Differences Among Three Standards for the MacCAT-CR in Patients with Schizophrenia" (with Laura B. Dunn, Barton W. Palmer, P. S. Appelbaum, G. A. Aarons, and Dilip V. Jeste), Schizophrenia Research (2007).
• “Assessing Decisional Capacity for Clinical Research or Treatment: A Review of Instruments” (with Laura B. Dunn, M. A. Nowrangi, Barton W. Palmer and Dilip V. Jeste). American Journal of Psychiatry (2006).
• “Capacity to Consent to or Refuse Treatment and/or Research: Theoretical Considerations” (with Dilip V. Jeste). 24 Behavioral Sciences and the Law 411 (2006).
• “Decisional Capacity in Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders: Empirical Database and Policy Implications” (with Dilip V. Jeste). 24 Behavioral Sciences and the Law 607 (2006).
• “Response — Our Debt to Jay Katz.” 6 Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics 415 (2006). - (Hein)
• “A Collaborative Model for Research on Decisional Capacity and Informed Consent in Older Patients with Schizophrenia: Bioethics Unit of a Geriatric Psychiatry Intervention Research Center” (with Dilip V. Jeste, Laura B. Dunn, Barton W. Palmer, M. Halpin, P. Appelbaum and L. Schneiderman). 171 Psychopharmacology 68 (2004).
• “Refusing Care: Forced Treatment and the Use of Psychiatric Advance Directives.” 4 Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice 35 (2004).
• "Involuntary Outpatient Commitment." 9 Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 94 (2003).

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Roll Call
March 16, 2023
Re: Robin Craig

Professor Robin Craig was interviewed about the Navajo nation's water issues in a drought-stricken area. "Craig said the 9th Circuit’s approach comes from a 1908 Supreme Court case that found tribes had some water rights where they were not explicitly granted."

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