Faculty - University of Virginia School of Law

CONTACT
jmonahan@virginia.edu
(434) 924-3632
Room WB177D

ASSISTANT
Pennie Newell

SUBJECTS
Social science in law, forensic psychiatry, mental health, mental disorders, violence, competence, mental hospitals, criminology, law and psychiatry

MacArthur Project

John Monahan

John S. Shannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Horace W. Goldsmith Research Professor of Law
Professor of Psychology and Psychiatric Medicine
Ph.D., Indiana University, 1972
B.A., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1968

John Monahan, a psychologist, joined the Law School faculty in 1980. He now holds the John S. Shannon Distinguished Professorship in Law.

Monahan was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1989, and has served on the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Research Council. He was elected a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He also has been a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School, New York University School of Law, the American Academy in Rome, All Souls College and Oxford. In 1997, he received an honorary law degree from the City University of New York.

Since 1986, Monahan has directed two large research projects in the area of mental health law. These projects, on which Virginia Law Professor Richard Bonnie has also served, have been supported by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Monahan is the author or editor of 15 books and has written more than 200 articles and chapters. One of those books, Social Science in Law, co-authored by Larry Walker, is entering its seventh edition and has just been published in Chinese. Two of his other books won the Manfred Guttmacher Award of the American Psychiatric Association for outstanding research in law and psychiatry: The Clinical Prediction of Violent Behavior in 1982 and (with others) Rethinking Risk Assessment in 2002. His articles have been published in the Yale Law Journal and the Virginia, University of Pennsylvania, California, Iowa, and Southern California law reviews.

Monahan’s work has been cited frequently by courts, including the California Supreme Court in the landmark Tarasoff v. Regents and the U.S. Supreme Court in Barefoot v. Estelle, in which he was referred to as "the leading thinker on the issue" of violence risk assessment.

Scholarship Profile: Mental Health Law's "Leading Thinker" (Virginia Journal 1999)

Publications
Current Courses
All Courses
In the Media

"Victim and Prosecutor Back Death Row Inmate's Bid for Resentencing" (The New York Times, 03/28/2013)

"Focus on Mental Health Laws to Curb Violence Is Unfair, Some Say" (The New York Times, 02/01/2013)

"Why Improving Mental Health Would Do Little to End Gun Violence" (National Journal, 01/24/2013)

"Predicting Violence Is A Work In Progress" (The Washington Post, 01/03/2013)

Virginia Returning Prisoners to Jail at Lower-Than-Average Rate, Study Shows (The Washington Post, 04/13/2011)

"Supreme Court to Weigh Sociology Issue in Wal-Mart Discrimination Case" (The New York Times, 03/27/2011)

"You Will Commit a Crime in the Future" (Boston Globe, 02/20/2011)

"Helping the Mentally Ill" (Washington Post, 01/20/2011)

"Arms and the Unbalanced" (Time Magazine, 01/13/2011)

"Experts Say Violence Not Necessarily Linked to Mental Illness" (The Lincoln Tribune, 01/12/2011)

"If You Think Someone Is Mentally Ill: Loughner's Six Warning Signs" (Time Magazine, 01/10/2011)

“U.Va. Law, 20 Years on Virginia Study Provides Unique Peek into Lawyer Job Satisfaction” (Virginia Lawyers Weekly, 08/16/2010)

"Rapid Emotional Swings Could Precede Violence" (The Science News, 04/21/2009)

"Mental Illness Alone Is No Trigger for Violence" (Associated Press, 02/02/2009)

"Tragedy Can Be Averted" (Washington Post, 08/19/2008)

"Mentally Ill Unfairly Portrayed as Violent" (The Boston Globe, 02/25/2008)

"Home-based Psychotherapy a Growing Field; Violence Extremely Rare" (Eagle-Tribune (MA), 02/10/2008)

"Man vs Machine: How Computers Routed the Experts" (Financial Times, 09/01/2007)

"Dramatic Use of Statistics in a $280 Billion - $800 Billion Cigarette Case" (blogspot.com, 08/09/2007)

"To Know a Killer" (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 04/29/2007)

"Literary Tragedy: Writing Profs Read Between the Lines" (The Hook, 04/26/2007)

"Tech Tragedy has Implications for Dealing with Mentally Ill" (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 04/22/2007)

"The Challenge of Preventing Violence Is Not Just an American Problem" (co-author) (The Guardian, 04/22/2007)

"Mental Health, the Law and Predicting Violence" (Talk of the Nation (NPR), 04/18/2007)

"Devotion to Most Severe Cases Raises Risk of Personal Danger" (The Washington Post, 09/05/2006)

"Untrue Confessions/Startling Research Strikes at the Core of Criminal Prosecution; Eye Witnesses, Even Confessions, Turn Out To Be Unreliable" (Orange County [Calif.] Register/MSNBC, 10/10/2004)

"Texas Study Challenges 'Violent Behavior' Predictions" (Los Angeles Times, 03/31/2004)

"He Led a Rich Life and Left a Lasting Memory" (Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, 02/27/2004)

"Duke University: Study To Examine Effectiveness For Mentally Ill Patients" (Biotech Week, 10/08/2003)

"Advance Directives: Study To Examine Effectiveness For Mentally Ill Patients" (Mental Health Weekly Digest/Managed Care Weekly Digest/Health & Medicine Week, 10/06/2003)

"National Institute of Mental Health Funds 1.98 Million Study to Examine Effectiveness of Advance Directives for Patients With Mental Illnesses" (Ascribe Newswire, 09/16/2003)

"Juveniles and Competency" (Morning Edition/NPR, 03/04/2003)

"Cleveland Clinic Isn't Liable in Slaying By Ex-Psychiatric Patient" (Fulton County Daily Report, 02/25/2003)

"A Tightrope Victory" (National Law Journal, 02/21/2003)

"Grade Inflation: Does A Stand for Average?" (The Virginian-Pilot, 02/09/2003)

"Fort Bragg Killings Bear Some Similarities/ Highest Levels of the Army Are Troubled by Spate of Homicides at Fayetteville" (The Virginian-Pilot, 08/02/2002)

"High Court to Reexamine Sexual Predator Law Crime: Freedom for a Serial Rapist, and Many Others, Hinges on Question of the Likelihood of Recidivism" (The Los Angeles Times, 02/26/2002)