Petrie-Flom Center: Health Law, Biotech and Bioethics

The past year was a historic one for health law, with the Supreme Court issuing the final word on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act alongside a host of other critical developments. In February, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, in partnership with the New England Journal of Medicine, held its first annual Health Law Year in P/Review event.

Following a vote of the Harvard Law School faculty, I. Glenn Cohen, a leading expert on the intersection of health care, bioethics and the law, will be promoted from assistant professor to tenured professor of law, effective July 1. Cohen has served as an assistant professor since 2008, and as co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics since 2009.

The intersection of medical tourism and ethical and legal questions are at the heart of I. Glenn Cohen's new book, “Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics,” the focus of his year as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Professor Einer Elhauge ‘86 has released an e-book—titled “Obamacare on Trial” —on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case decided by the Supreme Court. Elhauge raises points that were not aired in the courtroom, including the fact that the constitutional framers themselves had approved mandates to buy health insurance.

The Greenwall Foundation has chosen Harvard Law School Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen '03, a leading expert on the intersection of bioethics and the law, to receive one of three Faculty Scholar Awards in Bioethics. The award allows recipients to conduct extensive independent research to help set public policy and standards of clinical practice.  

On Feb. 1, the Harvard Law School Federalist Society sponsored a debate on the philosophical and legal issues surrounding the field of embryonic research. The event, “Embryo Ethics and the Law,” featured Christopher Tollefsen, a philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina, and HLS Assistant Professor Glenn Cohen, co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen, co-director of HLS’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, is the author of three recently published articles on health law topics.

HLS Professor Einer Elhauge ’86, the founding director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, wrote “The Irrelevance of the Broccoli Argument against the Insurance Mandate,” which was published online Dec. 21 by the New England Journal of Medicine.

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear challenges to the constitutionality of the Health Care Law. In an op-ed and a debate this past week, two HLS faculty members (Professors Einer Elhauge '86 and Laurence Tribe '66) and a prominent alumnus (former Solicitor General Paul Clement '92) shared their opinions on the mandate's constitutionality.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen joined medical and legal experts live via Skype on Oct. 25 at Mississippi College School of Law to debate the implications of Mississippi’s Personhood initiative, which will appear on the state’s ballot Nov. 8. The initiative asks: “Should the term 'person' be defined to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the equivalent thereof?”

On May 20 through 21, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School convened an international, multidisciplinary conference providing legal and ethical analysis of one of the broadest reaching developments in health care of the last 20 years: its globalization.

The United States cannot afford to allow ongoing legal ambiguities to compromise the vast potential of stem-cell research, yet the struggle over federal funding for research involving human embryonic stem cells may well be waged for years to come, write Harvard Law School Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen and Dr. Eli Y. Adashi in an article published by the New England Journal of Medicine on May 18.

Debating what Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow called “one of the most important public policy issues and one of the most important constitutional issues,” three law professors offered different perspectives on whether the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) violates the commerce clause of the Constitution and infringes on personal liberties.

Joseph H. Flom ’48, the last living named partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and a leader in the field of mergers and acquisitions, died February 23, 2011 in New York City. He was 87. Flom helped transform a small New York firm into one of the most powerful legal institutions in the world, and he was also a dedicated philanthropist and supporter of Harvard Law School.

In his essays, Samuel Moyn considers topics such as human rights and the Holocaust, international courts, and liberal internationalism. Skeptical of humanitarian justifications for intervention, he writes,“[H]uman rights history should turn away from ransacking the past as if it provided good support for the astonishingly specific international movement of the last few decades.”

Founded five years ago as a think tank to respond to the need for leading legal scholarship at the intersection of medicine, science, and law, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School tackles a wide range of issues, bringing together top scholars from a variety of fields in an interdisciplinary approach to some of the thorniest problems faced by society today.

On January 19, Harvard Law School Assistant Professor Glenn Cohen welcomed participants to the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Industry Summit at Harvard.