Law 792:  Health Law & Bioethics

This seminar will examine modern debates over biomedical ethics and the law, ranging from evolving understandings of the duty to provide informed consent in the context of medical treatment and human subjects research to how to encourage more organ donation, what duties nonprofit hospitals should have as a result of being nonprofit, and the limits of state power in containing infectious diseases or other epidemics, among other questions.  The basic architecture of the course is drawn from Health Law and Bioethics:  Cases in Context (Aspen, 2008, with Joan Krause, Sandra Johnson, and Richard Saver, eds.), which will supplemented with discussion of emerging policy challenges in medicine, like efforts to respond to the risks posed by Ebola. 

Prerequisites: There are no prerequisites for this seminar, although some familiarity with health law will benefit students.

Evaluation:  90% of the grade in this course will come from a three-hour final exam and 10% from class participation.