Health, Food, and Drug Law

Glenn Cohen and Carmel Shachar reflect on the administration’s successes, failures, and agenda for the future.

The new Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR) at Harvard Law School recently convened a conference on the future of psychedelics law and regulation.

Helping key players across Massachusetts — including the City of Boston and environmental nonprofits — reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 is a focus for the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School.

Michael Ashley Stein ’88, executive director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, says the Department of Education should go beyond the Americans with Disabilities Act in investigating state bans against mandating face coverings in schools.

Harvard Law School’s Shayna Medley explains Texas’s anti-abortion law, why she believes it violates Roe, and what she thinks it could signal for the future of reproductive rights.

As special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, or VCF, Rupa Bhattacharyya ’95 is working to ensure that fair compensation goes to the victims of the attacks.

Lecturer on Law James Toomey ’19, on how conservatorships work and what rights are afforded to those who — like Britney Spears — wish to extricate themselves from their constraints.

Harvard Law School students are working to create a Massachusetts public bank to help minority-owned businesses, small farms, and gateway cities.

Mason Marks, POPLAR project lead and Petrie-Flom senior fellow, explains how the initiative will fill a gap in research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of psychedelics law and policy, and previews some of the initiative’s topics of inquiry.

Health law has become especially timely in this year of COVID-19 vaccines and revitalized Obamacare. But for graduating student Phebe Hong ’21, it’s a passion that began in high school.

Zachary Weinstein ’21 didn’t always want to be a lawyer. In fact, for most of his life, he was more likely to be found in front of a camera than in front of a judge.

Emily M. Broad Leib ’08, faculty director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic, discusses food insecurity and the challenges and crises in the U.S. food system, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Last Lecture Series at Harvard Law School, sponsored annually by the 3L and LL.M. class marshals, is an HLS tradition in which selected faculty members impart insight, advice, and final words of wisdom to the graduating class.

In evaluating President Biden's first 100 days, Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Bartholet says the president has been a champion for children and families, but she hopes he will also reform the current homeschooling regime .

I. Glenn Cohen ’03 and Carmel Shachar J.D./M.P.H. ’10 of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics discuss the Biden administration's healthcare agenda.

What are the ramifications of this pandemic year for medical practitioners? And how might the future of health care be shaped by the wounds inflicted on those we entrust with our lives?

The effect of COVID-19 on the law has been transformative and wide-ranging, but as a Harvard Law School panel pointed out on the one-year anniversary of campus shutdown, the changes haven’t all been for the worse.

Disheartened by tales from family and friends frustrated by his home state of Pennsylvania's vaccine distribution system, Seth Rubinstein ’22, a second year student at Harvard Law School, knew he wanted to get involved.

Harvard Law alum Daniel Aaron ’20 thinks high obesity rates among people of color may be another legacy of ongoing racism in America.

Since President Joe Biden took office in January, dozens of Harvard Law community members, including faculty and alumni, have been tapped to serve in high-profile positions in his administration

On February 11, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School announced the formation of its new advisory board.

Should smoking be among the pre-existing health risks that qualify people for priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine? Harvard Law public health expert Carmel Shachar says the answer is yes. 

In their new report, An Evaluation of the Farmers to Families Food Box Program, Harvard's Food Law and Policy Clinic and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition highlight opportunities to make the program more equitable and effective amid the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School is joining forces with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, its counterpart at Yale Law School, to host a seminar series reflecting on ethical and legal issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Public health expert Carmel Shachar discusses the COVID-19 vaccine, who is likely to get it first, and whether people can be required to get vaccinated.

Experts gathered this week to discuss the ethical, social, and legal implications of technological advancements that facilitate the early detection of dementia.

HLS faculty on COVID-19 and the pressing questions of racism, racial injustice, and abuse of power that have driven this difficult year—and that are the focus of three new lecture series at the school.

Cass Sunstein ’78, Robert Walmsley University Professor and former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, believes “Nudge theory” might help bridge the gap between supply and demand for organ transplants.

In an interview with Harvard Law Today, Carmel Shachar, executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, says that political interference in the FDA’s process for ensuring that a vaccine is both safe and effective “opens the door to a public health disaster.”

In the first colloquium of a sweeping new series, “COVID-19 and the Law,” five Harvard Law faculty members grappled with the challenges, limitations, and opportunities of governmental powers during a public health crisis.

Cass Sunstein ’78, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, has been tapped by the World Health Organization to chair its Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health.

David Beck ’91, senior vice president and chief legal counsel at Boston Medical Center, shares what it took to get the safety-net hospital ready for the coronavirus and the most challenging month in its history—and what might come out of this difficult season.

“Confused,” “frustrating,” “fragmented,” “acute,” and “a reckoning” were just some of the ways three health care experts described the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic during a recent Berkman Klein virtual discussion.

PLAP students secure release of two prisoners with mental disabilities, and set new judicial precedent under the Americans with Disabilities Act

Robert Anderson, the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, discusses the latest Supreme Court decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma, a landmark for Native American rights that resolves decades' worth of legal argument.

The Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic has released The Global Food Donation Policy Atlas, a first-of-its-kind interactive resource to inspire long-term policy solutions to food waste, hunger, and climate change.

COVID-19 presents a unique threat to people in prisons and jails, agreed panelists at “Incarcerated Populations and COVID-19: Public Health, Ethical, and Legal Concerns,” a webinar hosted by Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.

During HLS' virtual commencement ceremony, a number of graduates were recognized for their outstanding leadership, citizenship and dedication to their studies.

A physician-researcher, Machteld van Egmond LL.M. ’20 explored the intersections among empirical science, law, and medicine during her LL.M. year at Harvard Law School.

Student fellows at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics recently celebrated their fellowships’ end virtually when their capstone meeting moved to Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the Clinical Program at Harvard Law School, the past weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic have been a time to mobilize. As the clinics have moved to working remotely, their work has continued with new urgency.

HLS Professors Glenn Cohen and Andrew Crespo discuss their proposals to protect doctors and hospitals from potential lawsuits and criminal prosecution during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a March 27 Petrie-Flom event on medical debt and universal health coverage, health experts and journalists raise serious concerns about the affordability of testing and hospital care.

Harvard Law School Professor Emily Broad Leib ’08, director of the HLS Food Law and Policy Clinic, and her students have been working furiously to ensure that the most vulnerable—and ultimately the rest of us—are fed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a Q&A, scholars at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School raise important legal and ethical questions about health care delivery and the enactment of extraordinary public health measures in response to the ongoing epidemic.

Patients are often subjected to nonconsensual procedures and other mistreatment during the birthing process; Alexa Richardson, a student fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, is working to bring this situation to light.

Amid rising rates of diabetes and obesity in the nation, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School recently hosted a panel discussion concerning levies—those enacted, those proposed and those failed—on sugary beverages in jurisdictions nationwide.