Dr. Jennifer A. Drobac, Esq.

About The Lecturer

Professor Dr. Jennifer A. Drobac is the Samuel R. Rosen Professor of Law at the Indiana University (IU) Robert H. McKinney School of Law. She teaches Family Law (including abortion law), Sexual Harassment Law, Juvenile Law, Women and the Law, Contracts & Sales, and other courses.

Professor Dr. Jennifer A. Drobac is the Samuel R. Rosen Professor of Law at the Indiana University (IU) Robert H. McKinney School of Law. She holds her doctoral (J.S.D.) and J.D. degrees from Stanford Law School and Masters and Bachelors (M.A. & B.A.) degrees in History from Stanford University.  At IU McKinney, she teaches Sexual Harassment Law, Family Law, Juvenile Law, Women and the Law, Contracts & Sales, and other courses.

In her role as a professor, Drobac has received numerous awards and fellowships. Four times, she was named a John S. Grimes Fellow and once a Dean’s Fellow in recognition of scholarly excellence. She also received the 2005 Indiana University Trustees’ Teaching Award and in 2010 received the Indiana University Sylvia E. Bowman Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2015, she became a Fulbright Scholar and completed her first assignment at the Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law in Patiala, Punjab, India. She was a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, in 2017 and a 2018 Visiting Scholar at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior. In 2020, she was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington School of Law.

Professor Drobac is also active in the community. From 2015-2018, she served as the Indiana University Faculty Council Executive Committee Representative for the Task Force on Sexual Assault, Prevention, Intervention, and Response. She also served as an Executive Board Member for the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Family and Juvenile Law. She was elected to become a member of the American Law Institute (ALI) in 2012. Professor Drobac served on the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Board of Trustees between 2002-2011.

Her scholarly work has been published in a variety of law reviews, journals, and monographs. In 2016, she finished her second book Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination, and Consent Law (University of Chicago Press, 2016) (rated “Essential,” the highest rating by Choice, a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries). In 2020, she completed a new edition of her textbook, Sex-Based Assault, Exploitation & Harassment: Cases, Problems & Practice (2d ed. Carolina Academic Press, with Professors Carrie N. Baker & Rigel C. Oliveri). Another monograph project, The Myth of Consent, is under contract for publication with Cambridge University Press (anticipated 2023). This book will analyze the neuroscientific and psychosocial aspects of decision-making by vulnerable adults and offer legal solutions for reform.

Since the beginning of October 2017, Professor Drobac has given over 150 interviews to media outlets concerning sexual harassment, #MeToo, abortion law, and a number of high-profile cases. Her comments appear in publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vox, and MarketWatch, to name just a few.

From 1992 to 2001, she practiced law in California, focusing on employment law issues and litigation, and from 1997 to 2000; she served as a lecturer at Stanford Law School. Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable Barefoot Sanders, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Publications

*"The Myth of 'Legal' Consent in a Consumer Culture" in FACETS OF CONSUMERISM IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY (Anand Pawar, ed., 2016).

SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF TEENAGERS: ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, DISCRIMINATION, AND CONSENT LAW (University of Chicago Press, 2016)—book which explores why the scientific facts concerning adolescent neurological and psychosocial development are incongruent with sexual harassment law, designed to protect our teenagers from sexual predators at school, at work, and at play.

"Consent, Teenagers, and (un)Civil(ized) Consequences," in CHILDREN, SEX AND THE LAW (Ellen Marrus, ed., NYU Press, 2015)—chapter that highlights the inconsistent legal treatment of adolescent consent, to recommend law reform based on the science of juvenile development and socio-legal public policy.

"Religion and Employment" (co-authored with Jill L. Wesley) in RELIGION AND THE STATE (Boris Bittker, Scott Idelman, and Frank Ravitch, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2015)—chapter which reviews employment antidiscrimination case and statutory law as it pertains to faith-based employment discrimination in a treatise concerning law, religion and the state.

"Technology and the 'Right to Service' in India: Getting Reddy'd" (coauthored with Oliver R. Goodenough) in RIGHT TO SERVICE AND GOOD GOVERNANCE (Paramjit Singh Jaswal, ed., 2015).

"Sex-Based Harassment: A Comment on U.S. and Indian Legal Responses" in WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND GENDER EQUALITY (Gurpreet Randhawa, et al., eds., Aashna Publications, 2015).

SEXUAL HARASSMENT LAW: History, Cases, and Theory (Carolina Academic Press, 2005).

ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, SEX-BASED HARASSMENT: Best Practices For the Legal Profession, Prepared for the Commission by Deborah L. Rhode and Jennifer A. Drobac (December 2002).

"Equality, Dignity & Privacy: Indian & US 'Pansexual' Human Rights," INDIAN CONST. L.R. 1 (Apr. 2017).

"Religion and Employment Anti-Discrimination Law: Past, Present, and Post Hosanna-Tabor," 69 NYU ANN. SURV. AM. L. 761 (2015) (co-authored with Jill L. Wesley).

"Exposing the Myth of Consent: Strictures from Neuroscience, Economics, and Relational Contracting," 12 IND. HEALTH L. REV. 471 (2015) (co-authored with Oliver R. Goodenough).

"The Neurobiology of Decision-Making in High Risk Youth & The Law of Consent to Sex," 17 NEW CRIM. L. REV. 502 (2014) (coauthored with Prof. Leslie Hulvershorn, M.D.)(peer reviewed).

"Wake Up and Smell the Starbucks Coffee: How Doe v. Starbucks Confirms the End of the 'Age of Consent' in California and Perhaps Beyond," 33 B.C. J.L. & SOC. JUST. 1 (2013)(lead article).

A Bee Line in the Wrong Direction: Science, Teenagers, and the Sting to "the Age of Consent" 20 J. LAW & POLICY 63 (2012).

Jazzing Up Family Law, 42 INDIANA L. REV. 533 (2009).

A Uniform Domestic Partnership Act: Marrying Business Partnership And Family Law, 41 GEORGIA L. REV. 349 (lead article, coauthored with Antony Page)(2007).

I Can’t To I Kant: The Sexual Harassment of Working Adolescents, Competing Theories, and Ethical Dilemmas, 70 Albany L. Rev.675 (20

“Developing Capacity”: Adolescent “Consent” at the Workplace, at Law, and in the Sciences of the Mind, 10 U.C. DAVIS J. JUVENILE L. & POL’Y 1 (2006)(lead article).

Sex and the Workplace: "Consenting" Adolescents and a Conflict of Laws, 79 WASH. L. REV. 471 (2004).

The Oncale Opinion: A Pansexual Response, 30 MCGEORGE L. REV. 1269 (1999).

Pansexuality and the Law, 5 WM. & MARY J. WOMEN & L. 297 (1999).

Note, For the Sake of the Children: Court Consideration of Religion in Child Custody Cases, 50 STAN. L. REV. 1609 (1998).

The "Perfect" Jointure: Its Formulation After the Statute of Uses, 19 CAMBRIAN L. REV. 26 (1988).

Education

B.A., 1981, M.A., 1987, Stanford University

J.D., 1987, J.S.D., 2000, Stanford Law School