Health, Food, and Drug Law

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.