Doron Dorfman

Doron Dorfman, Associate Professor

Associate Professor of Law

  • Degrees:

  • J.S.D., J.S.M., Stanford Law School LL.M., LL.B., B.A., University of Haifa
  • Contact:

  • [email protected]
  • Tel: 973-642-8804
  • SSRN Site link
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Courses:

  • Torts, Health Care Access and Finance, Disability Law, Employment Discrimination Law

Professor Dorfman’s research and teaching focus on disability law, health law, employment law, torts, and family law. His work has won multiple writing awards, was cited by federal courts and the Israeli Supreme Court, and was featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.

In 2023, Professor Dorfman was honored with the Michael J. Zimmer Memorial Award for a rising scholar who has made a significant contribution to the field of work law. In 2021, he was invited to testify before Congress on the relationship between vaccine requirements and anti-discrimination law.

Professor Dorfman’s research was published or is forthcoming in leading law reviews such as the Michigan Law Review, Cornell Law Review, and University of Pennsylvania Law Review. He also published in top peer review journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, and the Journal of Health Politics, Policy & Law.

Professor Dorfman is a frequent contributor to the Bill of Health Blog at Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center and is an editor for the Equality Section of Jotwell. He serves in leadership roles in the AALS Section on Disability Law and Section on Law, Medicine and Health care and is also the co-organizer of the Disability Legal Studies Collaborative Research Network (CRN) in the Law & Society Association. Dorfman is an affiliated researcher with the aChord Center: Social Psychology for Social Change at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Prior to Seton Hall Law School, Professor Dorfman taught at Syracuse University College of Law. He earned a B.A. in communication (2009), an LL.B. (J.D. equivalent, 2009) and an LL.M. (2010), all from the University of Haifa. He later earned a J.S.M. (2014) and J.S.D. (2019) from Stanford Law School. Before arriving at Stanford, he was a litigator in private practice in Israel and was actively involved in NGOs such as Kav La’Oved-Worker’s Hotline, where he gave legal advice to disadvantaged workers and asylum seekers.


Twitter: @DorfmanDoron

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

LAW REVIEW ARTICLES

Third-Party Accommodations,123 Mich. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025)

Penalizing Prevention: The Paradoxical Legal Treatment of Preventive Medicine, 108 Cornell. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024)

Disability as Metaphor in American Law, 170 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1757 (2022)

The PrEP Penalty, 63 B.C. L. Rev. 813 (2022)

Suspicious Species, 2021 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1363 (2021)

[Un]Usual Suspects: Deservingness, Scarcity, and Disability Rights, 10 UC Irvine L. Rev. 557 (2020)

Reweighing Medical Civil Rights, 72 Stan. L. Rev. Online 176 (2020) (with Rabia Belt)

The Professionalization of Urban Accessibility, 47 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1213 (2020) (with Mariela Yabo)

Disability Identity in Conflict: Performativity in the U.S. Social Security Benefits System, 38 T. Jefferson L. Rev. 47 (2015)

The Inaccessible Road to Motherhood – The Tragic Consequence of Not Having Reproductive Policies for Israelis with Disabilities, 30 Colum. J. Gender & L. 49 (2015)

BOOK CHAPTERS

An Experimental Jurisprudence Approach to Health Law & Disability Law, in Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence, Cambridge University Press (Kevin Tobia, ed) (forthcoming 2024)

Mask Shaming: On Private Enforcement and Disability Politics, in Regulating the Body (Austin Sarat & Susanna Lee eds.) (forthcoming 2024)

Commentary on Olmstead v. L.C ex rel. Zimring, in Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Health Law Opinions, Cambridge University Press (Seema Mohapatra & Lindsey F. Wiley, eds.) (forthcoming 2023)

The Universal View of Disability and Its Danger to the Civil Rights Model, in Boundaries of Disability: Critical Perspectives, Routledge (Licia Carlson & Matthew Murray, eds.) (2021)

Disability, Law, and the Humanities: The Rise of Disability Legal Studies, in Oxford Handbook of L. & Human, Oxford University Press (Simon Stern, Maksymilian Del Mar, & Bernadette Meyler, eds.) (2019) (with Rabia Belt)

OTHER JOURNAL ARTICLES

Physicians’ Refusal to Wear Masks to Protect Vulnerable Patients – An Ethical Dilemma for the Medical Profession, JAMA Health Forum (2023) (with Mical Raz & Zackary D. Berger)

Approving Workplace Accommodations for Patients with Long Covid — Advice for Clinicians, 388 New Eng. J. Med. 2115 (2023) (with Zackary D. Berger)

Bans on Mask Requirements versus Disability Accommodations – A New COVID-19 Conundrum, JAMA Health Forum (2021) (with Mical Raz)

Pandemic “Disability Cons,", 49 J. L. Med. & Ethics 401 (2021)

The Treatment of Disability Under Crisis Standards of Care: An Empirical and Normative Analysis of Change Over Time During COVID-19, 46 J. Health Pol. Pol’y & L. 831 (2021) (with Ari Ne’eman, Michael Ashley Stein & Zackary D. Berger)

Can the COVID-19 Interstate Travel Restrictions Help Lift the FDA’s Blood Ban?, 7 J.L. & Biosciences 1 (2020)

Disability Rights as a Necessary Framework for Crisis Standards of Care and the Future of Health Care, 50  Hastings Cent. Rep. 28 (2020) (with others)

Mask Exemptions During the COVID-19 Pandemic – A New Frontier for Clinicians, JAMA Health Forum (2020) (with Mical Raz)

Fear of the Disability Con: Perceptions of Fraud and Special Rights Discourse, 53 Law & Soc’y Rev. 1051 (2019)

Re-Claiming Disability: Identity, Procedural Justice and the Disability Determination Process, 42 Law & Soc. Inquiry 195 (2017)

Surrogate Parenthood: Between Genetics and Intent, 3 J.L. & Biosciences 404 (2016)

The Blind Justice Paradox: Judges with Visual Impairments and the Disability Metaphor, 5 Cambridge Int’l L.J 272 (2016)

BOOK REVIEWS

Review of Politics of Empowerment: Disability Rights and the Cycle of American Policy Reform By David Pettinicchio, 54 Law & Soc’y Rev. 530 (2020)

COMMENTARIES

Lift the Blood Ban, But Don’t Penalize PrEP Users,  Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center: Bill of Health (JUNE 1, 2023)

Three Reactions to Braidwood v. Becerra, Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center: Bill of Health (APRIL 3, 2023) (alongside Elizabeth McCuskey & Rachel Sachs)
The Institutionalization Missing Data Problem, Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center: Bill of Health (September 14, 2022) [with Scott Landes]

A Conversation About Law & Political Economy and Disability, Part 1&2, LPE Blog (2022) (with Rabia Belt, Jasmine Harris, Jamelia Morgan & Karen Tani)

NFIB v. OSHA and Its Contradiction with the GOP’s Disability Employment Agenda, Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center: Bill of Health (March 14, 2022)

Challenges Faced by Employees with Disabilities Amid the Return to In-Person Work, Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center: Bill of Health (August 4, 2021)

Students with Disabilities Could Sue Their Schools to Require Masks, The Washington Post (August 19, 2021) (with Mical Raz)

The Paradoxical Legal Treatment of Preventive Medicine, Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center: Bill of Health (November 2, 2021)

Being Anti-Mask Doesn’t Make You Disabled, Newsday (May 21, 2020)

COVID-19 May Help Lift FDA Policy On Gay Blood Donors, Law360 (April 3, 2020)

How an Unexpected Collaboration Led Utah to Amend Its Discriminatory Triage Plan, The Hill (August 28, 2020)

Thirty Years Later, Still Fighting Over the ADA, The Regulatory Review: A Publication of the Penn Program on Regulation (2020) (with Thomas F. Burke)

Subminimum Employment for People with Disabilities, Real Clear Policy (November 1, 2018) (with Rabia Belt)

Inaccessible Motherhood: The Normative Void Regarding Reproductive Policies for Persons with Disabilities, Versa: Opinions of the Israeli Supreme Court, A Project of Cardozo Law (June 16, 2016)

The Reincarnation of HIV Stigma, The Stanford Daily (Feb. 3, 2016)