Health, Food, and Drug Law

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.

Effective Jan. 1, three faculty members were promoted and two new scholars joined the HLS faculty.

Professor Crystal Yang ’13 discusses her paper "Fear and the Safety Net: Evidence from Secure Communities," which examines the link between tougher immigration enforcement in the United States and the lack of participation in government safety-net programs by Hispanic citizens.

Emily Broad Leib ’08, founder and director of Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, has been named clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School.