Papers written by three HLS students received top honors in this year’s H. Thomas Austern Memorial Writing Competition.
Sponsored by the Food and Drug Law Institute, a nonprofit educational association dedicated to advancing public health, the contest serves to encourage law students to conduct scholarly research in the areas of foods, drugs, devices, and biologics. Prizes are awarded in two categories: papers fewer than 40 pages and papers between 41 and 100 pages.
Benjamin R. Rossen ’08 took first place in the long paper competition for his article, “FDA’s Proposed Regulations to Expand Access to Investigational Drugs for Treatment Use: The Status Quo in the Guise of Reform.”
Michael Kolber ’09 took first place in the short paper competition for his article, “Direct Final Rulemaking in the FDA: Lessons from the First Decade.”
Matthew Gordon ’08—“Why Researchers Might Have a Legal Duty to Disclose Individual Research Findings to Research Subjects”—placed second in the long paper category.
Winning articles are often published in FDLI’s Food and Drug Law Journal, the premier law journal for food and drug attorneys.
Peter Barton Hutt, senior counsel at Covington & Burling and HLS lecturer on law (he teaches the Food and Drug Law course) has assisted in the publication of more than 50 papers written by HLS students.
In 2007, six of the seven recipients of the award were HLS students (or former students).
The contest is in memory of H. Thomas Austern ’29, an expert in food and drug law and a longtime partner at Covington & Burling.