Health Law & Policy

For the growing number of empiricists at HLS, there’s nothing quite so satisfying—or unimpeachable—as resolving a thorny, often contentious, legal or policy question through rigorous analysis of cold, hard data.

Brett Stark co-founds a medical-legal partnership to assist children who seek asylum in the U.S.

As far back as Aristotle, people have been touting the benefits of group decision-making. Yet, as Professor Cass R. Sunstein ’78 and and Reid Hastie note in their new book, history suggests that groups are often unwise or downright foolish.

For law students interested in entrepreneurism and startups—as entrepreneurs themselves, as lawyers representing startups, or both—there is a wealth of growing and intersecting opportunities at Harvard Law School and across the university.

On March 28-29, The Harvard Food Law Society and the Food Literacy Project hosted the “Just Food? Forum on Justice in the Food System” at Harvard Law School, organized as part of Harvard’s yearlong Food Better initiative, created to discuss issues surrounding what we eat.

Fifty years after the Supreme Court kicked off its line of “right to privacy” cases with Griswold v. Connecticut, which declared unconstitutional a state statute prohibiting couples from using contraceptives, a panel of three Harvard Law professors met to discuss the impact and legacy of the landmark case.

This Fall, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, issued a challenge to students across the university to come up with fresh ideas for solving complex problems facing our food system in the United States and around the world.

"Powering the African Dream," a two-day series of roundtable discussions on the role of African women in in the United Nations' post-2015 Development Agenda and the Beijing +20 Review Process, was held at Harvard Law School on March 9-10.

The Food+ Research Symposium, which was hosted by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Harvard Kennedy School Sustainable Science Program, and the Harvard Center for the Environment, brought together 22 faculty speakers from eight Schools last Friday to deliver seven-minute presentations on the nexus of food, agriculture, environment, health, and society.

Credit: Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer “There is a little bit of a reason to worry. We could see a resurgence of disease in part because…

The Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation has spearheaded the filing of an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting that the Court affirm a court of appeals decision upholding the nationwide provision of federal subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

A former NBA All Star turned humanitarian. Supreme Court justices. Student protests. Take a look at some highlights of the people who visited and events that took place this semester at Harvard Law School.

At the inaugural Disabled American Veterans Distinguished Speaker Series at Harvard Law School, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald said the troubled agency is making progress in getting its house in order, citing more — and more timely — appointments and authorizations to see private doctors for veterans who live far from VA hospitals.

When Bryan Cressey J.D./M.B.A. ’76, a native of Seattle, was putting himself through the University of Washington by working at a conveyor-belt company, he grew intrigued by the “go-go era of the ’60s,” as he puts it, when business innovators such as James J. Ling were creating giant conglomerates. Cressey decided he wanted to build companies and applied to the J.D./M.B.A. program at Harvard. From his first job in 1976 with a venture capital firm in Chicago; to four years later co-founding Golder, Thoma & Cressey (later Golder, Thoma, Cressey, Rauner); to the present, Cressey’s leadership in industry consolidation with a particular expertise in the health care and medical services fields has been recognized by Fortune and Time magazines, among many other publications.

Laurence Tribe discusses some of the implications of the decisions of nine men and women with regard to gay marriage, gun rights, N.S.A. surveillance, health care, emerging threats to privacy, immigration and more.

From the statehouse to the schoolhouse, an HLS initiative changes the paradigm for educating young people who have experienced trauma.

In a move that caught many observers off guard, the U.S. Supreme Court last week announced it would review one of four cases currently challenging provisions…

This fall, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, issued the "Deans' Food System Challenge" (one of several competitions held by the Harvard Innovation Lab and sponsored by Harvard Schools), encouraging students across the university to come up with fresh ideas for solving complex problems facing our food system.

As an NBA All Star, Dikembe Mutombo battled Hakeem Olajuwon on the court. These days, his opponents, malaria and Ebola, are requiring much more than an emphatic block and his trademark “not in my house” finger waggle. Mutombo now uses his considerable stature to address his lifelong goal of improving the health, wellbeing, and future of the people of his home country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

One year ago, Co-vice Presidents of Harvard Law & International Development Society Maryum Jordan ’14 and Elizabeth Nehrling ’15 reached out to law schools around the world. Their question was simple: Are faculty and students at your institution interested in starting a law and international development student organization?

Individuals and communities can improve the food system, according to members of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, which has launched a year-long, university-wide focus on how to make food distribution more equitable, sustainable, and nutritious.

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that closely held, for-profit corporations have a right to exercise the religious beliefs of their owners and therefore cannot be required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to provide contraception coverage to employees if it conflicts with those views. The Gazette spoke with Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet  about the decision and what it means for future corporate challenges to the Affordable Care Act.

Five Harvard Law School professors presented a sampling of their innovative ideas in late May at the 2014 Harvard Law School Thinks Big lecture, an annual event that challenges faculty to explain those big ideas in short talks.

Cass Sunstein opened the 2014 Behavioral Economics, Law, and Health Policy Conference with a keynote address called “Choosing Not to Choose.” His talk set the tone for the two-day conference organized by The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, which drew nearly 200 lawyers, public health professionals, economists, and health policy analysts to the campus from May 2-3.

The Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation (CHLPI) recently released an insightful and action-oriented report on the landscape of type 2 diabetes in New Jersey. The report serves as a resource for diabetes advocates and offers detailed policy recommendations for the prevention and management of the disease.

The first volume of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences (JLB) was recently published by Oxford University Press. The new peer-reviewed, open access,…

First Lady Michelle Obama ’88 on cultivating a healthier future for children.

The HLS Library collection includes books and documents that highlight some of the historical rules and regulations surrounding everything comestible.

With more and more people deeply concerned about what they’re eating and what it means for our health, the economy, the environment, social justice, and even national security, Harvard Law School has created a new focus on food law.

Brown uses her own example—after leaving a law partnership upon the birth of her daughter, she is now a professor of business law—and those of many others, from a jewelry designer to a nurse to a rabbi, to show the possibilities for those who are unhappy with the practice of law. Such a change is not easy, but a lawyer’s skills can be reframed and refreshed, she says, adding that she has never met a former lawyer who regrets having left the profession.

In June, a delegation from Harvard Law School led by Dean Martha Minow embarked on a 15-day, five-stop visit to East Asia and to the fore of fast-moving developments and challenges across the region.

The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School has joined with Duke University, Stanford University and Oxford University Press to launch and publish a new peer-reviewed, open access, online journal in 2014: Journal of Law and the Biosciences (JLB).

Harvard Law School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics will launch a novel Ethics and Law initiative as part of the Regulatory Foundations, Ethics, and Law Program of Harvard Catalyst | The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center.

“HLS Thinks Big,” an event inspired by the global TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talks and modeled after the university's “Harvard Thinks Big” event, was held at Harvard Law School on May 28. Four professors—Daniel Nagin, Glenn Cohen '03, Jeannie Suk '02, and James Greiner—presented on some of their recent work and research.

As Americans travel to other countries for medical care, Professor Glenn Cohen looks at the implications at home and abroad.

Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform from 2009 to 2011, answers questions about the Affordable Care Act.

“The Looming Threat of Liability for Accountable Care Organizations and What to Do About It,” a new article by Harvard Law School Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03 and Dr. H. Benjamin Harvey ’09, was published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Harvard Law School Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03 and Gideon A. Schor ’89 recently filed an amicus brief on behalf of Dr. Eric S. Lander in a pending Supreme Court case that will address whether human genes are patentable.

The past year was a historic one for health law, with the Supreme Court issuing the final word on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act alongside a host of other critical developments. In February, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, in partnership with the New England Journal of Medicine, held its first annual Health Law Year in P/Review event.

Following a vote of the Harvard Law School faculty, I. Glenn Cohen, a leading expert on the intersection of health care, bioethics and the law, will be promoted from assistant professor to tenured professor of law, effective July 1. Cohen has served as an assistant professor since 2008, and as co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics since 2009.

“Medical tourism—the travel of patients who are residents of one country (the ‘home country’) to another country for medical treatment (the ‘destination country’)—represents a growing and important business," writes Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03 in a recent article.

The intersection of medical tourism and ethical and legal questions are at the heart of I. Glenn Cohen's new book, “Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics,” the focus of his year as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

“Client Science: Advice for Lawyers on Counseling Clients through Bad News and Other Legal Realities,” by Marjorie Corman Aaron ’81 (Oxford). No one likes to deliver bad news—attorneys included. But oftentimes providing honest and difficult advice is a crucial part of the job, and Aaron offers her own advice on how best to do it.

U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz calls for a “return to the framers’ vision of a constitutionally limited government”

Professor Einer Elhauge ’86 is author of the e-book “Obamacare On Trial” (Edward Elgar), focused on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case decided by the Supreme Court in June. Elhauge raises points that were not aired in the courtroom, including the fact that the constitutional framers themselves had approved mandates to buy health insurance.