In the wake of landmark health care legislation passed this spring, a new book edited by Professor Einer Elhauge ’86, founding director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, couldn’t be more timely. “The Fragmentation of U.S. Health Care: Causes and Solutions” (Oxford University Press, 2010) explores the lack of unified decision-making that plagues the U.S. health care system. The interdisciplinary volume—including a contribution from Elhauge and other professors of law, medicine, economics, health, business and political science—makes the case that this fragmentation leads to increased medical error, higher costs, less preventive care and misallocations of health care resources. It identifies possible causes—including laws, such as ones that mandate separate payments for each provider and amount to disincentives for coordinating care. It also examines the regulatory issues and business and economic motivations the authors believe are responsible for fragmentation and proposes reforms to make the system more efficient and effective.
“Transformations in American Legal History, II: Law, Ideology, and Methods” (Harvard University Press, 2010), edited by Daniel W. Hamilton and Alfred L. Brophy, is the second volume in a tribute to Professor Morton Horwitz ’67. It includes contributions from HLS colleagues Professors Yochai Benkler ’94, Frank Michelman ’60, Martha Minow and Mark V. Tushnet, as well as former students and others.
Professors John F. Manning ’85 and Matthew C. Stephenson ’03 are the authors of “Legislation and Regulation” (Foundation Press, 2010). The new casebook introduces students to the theory and practice of statutory interpretation, the constitutional architecture of the modern administrative state, the key elements of the lawmaking processes used by Congress in passing legislation and by administrative agencies in enacting regulations, and the judicial review of regulations. The book grew out of materials Manning and Stephenson had developed in connection with teaching the new Legislation and Regulation course adopted in the reform of the HLS first-year curriculum that the faculty passed in 2006. It is specifically designed to be used in the growing number of courses in law schools across the country that teach statutory and regulatory subjects in the first year.
After Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was mistakenly arrested by Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley for attempting to break into his own home last July, a media firestorm was ignited. In “the presumption of guilt: the arrest of henry louis gates and race, class and crime in america” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Professor Charles Ogletree Jr. ’78 uses this incident as a lens through which to explore issues of race and class, with the goal of creating a more just legal system for all. Ogletree is director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at HLS.