Health Law & Policy

On Feb. 1, the Harvard Law School Federalist Society sponsored a debate on the philosophical and legal issues surrounding the field of embryonic research. The event, “Embryo Ethics and the Law,” featured Christopher Tollefsen, a philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina, and HLS Assistant Professor Glenn Cohen, co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

HLS Professor Charles Fried was counsel of record in an amicus brief filed on Jan. 13 with the Supreme Court on behalf of 104 health law professors supporting the constitutionality of the insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which will be challenged before the Supreme Court in Department of Health and Human Services v. State of Florida in March.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen, co-director of HLS’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, is the author of three recently published articles on health law topics.

HLS Professor Einer Elhauge ’86, the founding director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, wrote “The Irrelevance of the Broccoli Argument against the Insurance Mandate,” which was published online Dec. 21 by the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Prospects for the Professions in China” (Routledge, 2010) edited by William P. Alford ’77, William Kirby and Kenneth Winston. Through its meditations on Chinese professional…

On November 8, Emily Savner ‘13 of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation testified at a regional listening session convened by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The session was convened to elicit comments from individuals and groups about the health services that should be included in the soon-to-be created Essential Health Benefits package mandated through health care reform. Once finalized and implemented by HHS, the Essential Health Benefits package will provide a federally mandated set of health services to millions of currently uninsured Americans through both Medicaid and newly-created subsidized private health insurance plans. 

On Nov. 3, Dr. Franz Adlkofer, former executive director of the VERUM Foundation for Behavior and Environment, spoke to a Harvard Law School audience as part of the lectures and events series hosted by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. 

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear challenges to the constitutionality of the Health Care Law. In an op-ed and a debate this past week, two HLS faculty members (Professors Einer Elhauge '86 and Laurence Tribe '66) and a prominent alumnus (former Solicitor General Paul Clement '92) shared their opinions on the mandate's constitutionality.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen joined medical and legal experts live via Skype on Oct. 25 at Mississippi College School of Law to debate the implications of Mississippi’s Personhood initiative, which will appear on the state’s ballot Nov. 8. The initiative asks: “Should the term 'person' be defined to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the equivalent thereof?”

The Harvard Food Law Society recently co-sponsored “TEDxHarvardLaw,” a full-day conference held on Oct. 21, focused on food policy and public health, and the legal and policy approaches to increasing the supply and demand of healthy foods. The campus-wide event was independently organized and co-sponsored by 18 different HLS organizations under the auspices of TEDx, a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

At an event sponsored by the Harvard Law School American Constitution Society on October 18, Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) ’77 spoke about proposed legislation that would end the federal ban on marijuana, as well as the need for drug policy reform at the federal level and why marijuana policy is an issue better handled by the states.

In the first lecture of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics series, Paul Thacker, an investigative journalist and former U.S. Senate Finance Committee staffer, said that big pharmaceutical dollars not only own physicians but also many prominent medical school faculty who are paid to lobby for drugs.

On August 1st, Scotus Blog published an op-ed by Beneficial Professor of Law Charles Fried on the constitutionality of the healthcare mandate. In the piece, Fried argues that the attack against President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is pure politics and ignores established legal principles.

Where others see entrenched problems, the HLS Mississippi Delta Project—an interdisciplinary effort in the HLS Clinical and Pro Bono Programs—sees opportunity for transformation. Since launching less than three years ago, the project has made strides in improving public health, promoting economic development and assisting children in the Delta.

The new CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck, Kenneth Frazier ’78 is driven by high hopes for the company and what it can do

On May 20 through 21, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School convened an international, multidisciplinary conference providing legal and ethical analysis of one of the broadest reaching developments in health care of the last 20 years: its globalization.

The United States cannot afford to allow ongoing legal ambiguities to compromise the vast potential of stem-cell research, yet the struggle over federal funding for research involving human embryonic stem cells may well be waged for years to come, write Harvard Law School Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen and Dr. Eli Y. Adashi in an article published by the New England Journal of Medicine on May 18.

Debating what Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow called “one of the most important public policy issues and one of the most important constitutional issues,” three law professors offered different perspectives on whether the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) violates the commerce clause of the Constitution and infringes on personal liberties.