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Research Programs

Petrie-Flom Center: Health Law, Biotech and Bioethics

  • Glenn Cohen on animals, AI and morality

    Cohen receives faculty scholar award from Greenwall Foundation

    September 5, 2012

    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.  

  • Harvard Law School Media Roundup: From Gun Control to the Roberts’s Court to the Arab Spring

    July 26, 2012

    Over the past week, a number of HLS faculty members shared their viewpoints on events in the news. Here are some excerpts.

  • HLS Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen

    Professors debate “Embryo Ethics”

    February 13, 2012

    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.

  • HLS Professor Einer Elhauge '86

    Elhauge in NEJM: ‘Broccoli Argument’ is irrelevant against insurance mandate

    December 22, 2011

    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.

  • Glenn Cohen on animals, AI and morality

    Hat Trick: Cohen on Flynn v. Holder, Guatemalan reparations, and the ACA

    December 22, 2011

    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 Professors Einer Elhauge and Laurence Tribe

    Health care reform: HLS faculty and alumni weigh in

    November 16, 2011

    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.

  • Glenn Cohen on animals, AI and morality

    Cohen argues against the Mississippi Personhood Ballot Initiative

    November 1, 2011

    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?”

  • A Prescription for health law: Conferences, research and university-wide collaboration

    July 1, 2011

    There is no shortage of attorneys involved in legal issues related to the pharmaceutical and health care industries. There is, however, a shortage of law schools examining those issues. Since its founding, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics has aimed to rectify that problem.

  • The panel

    From medical tourism to medical migration: HLS conference looks at the globalization of health care

    June 28, 2011

    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.

  • HLS Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen and Dr. Eli Y. Adashi

    Cohen in the New England Journal of Medicine: ‘Human Embryonic Stem-Cell Research under Siege’

    May 19, 2011

    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.

  • Is the Obama Health Care Reform Constitutional? Fried, Tribe and Barnett debate the Affordable Care Act

    March 28, 2011

    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.

  • Summer 2011 (Tribute)

    Joseph H. Flom ’48 (1923 – 2011)

    February 25, 2011

    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.

  • Recent Faculty Books – Fall 2014

    November 21, 2010

    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.”

  • Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center (video)

    May 19, 2010

    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.

  • Glenn Cohen on animals, AI and morality

    Petrie-Flom Center brings pharmaceutical executives and academics together at clinical trials summit

    January 25, 2010

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

  • Jeff Crowley

    National Director of AIDS Policy Speaks on Health Care, Other Issues

    October 13, 2009

    Far more is at risk in the health care reform debates than the well-being of the 47 million Americans who are currently uninsured, according to Jeff Crowley, the White House director of the Office of National AIDS Policy and senior adviser on Disability Policy, who spoke to an engaged crowd of about 60 students and others at HLS Wednesday night.

  • Glenn Cohen on animals, AI and morality

    Cohen and Roin named co-directors of Petrie-Flom Center at HLS

    July 7, 2009

    Assistant Professors of Law I. Glenn Cohen ’03 and Benjamin Roin ’05 are the new co-directors of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Professor Einer Elhauge ’86, who has served as faculty director since the Center’s founding in 2005, will remain associated with the research program as its Founding Director.