Pamela Cohen, J.D.

Pamela Cohen, J.D.

Pamela Cohen, J.D. is a staff attorney at Disability Rights California (formerly Protection and Advocacy, Inc.) in Oakland, California, representing individuals with mental and physical disabilities both in facilities and in the community. She previously worked as an independent consultant focusing on legal and policy issues related to community-based care for older adults with mental disabilities, fair housing law, and international mental health law. She has also served as a court-appointed criminal appellate defense attorney specializing in issues of forensic mental health law. She has been a staff attorney at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington, D.C.,]{style="font-family:[ a project manager at the AARP Foundation, and a member of an International Commission of Jurists mission to study the rights of psychiatric patients in Japan.

From 2002 - 2013, Pamela was an adjunct professor at New York Law School, teaching internet-based distance-learning courses to domestic and international students in the areas of mental health and disability law. She has been a lecturer at Stanford Law School, a clinical lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and a Visiting Scholar at Sophia University in Tokyo. She has published several articles on U.S. and Japanese mental health law, and has been a frequent speaker at professional conferences. She is a 1987 graduate of Columbia University School of Law.