About the Program
The distinguishing feature of UVA Law School’s program in health law is its collaboration with the University’s School of Medicine and its Medical Center, which is consistently ranked among the nation’s top hospitals. At the Law School, law students can study health law while interacting with medical students and physicians from all medical specialties, including pediatrics, neurology, internal medicine (infectious disease and geriatrics) and psychiatry. Law faculty teach in the School of Medicine and Medical School professors teach Law School classes. This collaboration extends to health policy experts in the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, the Darden School of Business and the Schools of Architecture, Arts & Sciences, Engineering and Nursing. Students benefit from viewing the regulatory context through the eyes of physicians, inventors, health care administrators and experts from a variety of fields.
This interdisciplinary approach is further borne out through institutes and centers at UVA that allow students to study and work on pressing issues in health care, biotechnology, research, genetics and moral philosophy:
- Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy
- Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life
- Center for Biomedical Ethics
- Center for Health Equity and Precision Public Health
- Center for Global Health
J.D.-M.P.H. (Public Health) Program
In conjunction with the Department of Public Health Sciences at the School of Medicine, the Law School offers a dual degree in public health. Students have access to graduate courses in health policy and management, health economics, ethics, global health, social and behavioral health, environmental health and research methodology. Instituted in 2003, the M.P.H. program offers concentrations in generalist practice and research, health policy, and law and ethics, and includes field placement options in global health, health policy and public health sites. The program takes four years to complete and requires a minimum of 116 credits. More
J.D.-M.D. Program
Designed to educate the next generation of health leaders, the J.D.-M.D. program allows students to complete law and medical degrees in six years, instead of the seven years normally required if the degrees were pursued separately. Students spend the first three years and the summer of year five in classes at the School of Medicine, and years four and five at the Law School. In the final year, one semester is spent in each school. Students are required to secure admission separately to the School of Medicine and UVA Law through the normal admissions processes of the two schools. More
Clinic
Students in the yearlong Health and Disability Law Clinic help represent mentally ill and elderly clients in negotiations, administrative hearings and court proceedings. The legal matters may involve civil rights, mental health care in jails and prisons, disability benefits claims, access to health or rehabilitative services, creating wills and other testamentary documents, and advance directives.
January 30, 2020
Angela P. Harris, Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, delivered the opening keynote address at a conference hosted by the University of Virginia Schools of Law, Nursing and Medicine: “Healing Hate: A Public Health Perspective on Civil Rights in America.” Harris presented her research on how racial disparities in access to and quality of health care in America have lifelong impacts on communities of color. UVA Law professor Dayna Bowen Matthew ’87 introduced Harris.
Our perceptions of what we owe each other turn somewhat on whether we consider “another” to be “an other”—a stranger and not a friend. In this essay...
Gradualism should have won out in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, exerting gravitational influence on the majority and dissenters alike. In general...
Hot Flash: How Understanding Menopause Can Improve Life and Law for Everyone dissolves the silence and stigma surrounding menopause. The book frames...
During times of crisis, governments often consider policies that may promote safety, but that would require overstepping constitutionally protected...
Sonia M. Suter
This essay explores the regulation of sperm donation from a reproductive justice perspective. It compares formal sperm donation, which involves...
The SEC mandates that public companies assess new information that changes the risks that they face and disclose these if there has been a “material”...
Faculty Director(s)
Margaret Foster Riley
Professor of Law, General Faculty
Dorothy Danforth Compton Professor, Miller Center
Professor of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine
Professor of Public Policy, Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy
Director, Animal Law Program
Research
Our perceptions of what we owe each other turn somewhat on whether we consider “another” to be “an other”—a stranger and not a friend. In this essay...
Gradualism should have won out in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, exerting gravitational influence on the majority and dissenters alike. In general...
Hot Flash: How Understanding Menopause Can Improve Life and Law for Everyone dissolves the silence and stigma surrounding menopause. The book frames...
During times of crisis, governments often consider policies that may promote safety, but that would require overstepping constitutionally protected...
Sonia M. Suter
This essay explores the regulation of sperm donation from a reproductive justice perspective. It compares formal sperm donation, which involves...
The SEC mandates that public companies assess new information that changes the risks that they face and disclose these if there has been a “material”...
Philosophers have debated whether the advance directives of Alzheimer’s patients should be enforced, even if patients seem content in their demented...
More
Now that the Supreme Court has revoked the constitutional right to reproductive autonomy, we must reckon with the risks that our surveillance economy...
In August 2021, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine published its most recent opinion on the financial compensation of oocyte (egg) donors...
In this Foreword, I lay out the case for intimate privacy—what it is, why it is in jeopardy, and how we can fight to get it back, if we try...
The Political Language of Parental Rights: Abortion, Gender-Affirming Care, and Critical Race Theory
This Article explores how the rhetoric of parental rights has been deployed to override minors’ access to abortion, gender-affirming care, and...
June Carbone
The Article uncovers the hidden framework for the Supreme Court’s approach to public values, a framework that has shaped – and will continue to shape...
More
A Forum discussing:
Kidneys for Sale: Empirical Evidence From Iran by Moeindarbari T and Feizi M (2022). Transpl Int 35:10178. doi: https://doi.org/10...
As this Essay shows, the fertility discourse of the last half century deals with the profound effects that come from the transformation of the economy...
More
Does the U.S. Constitution guarantee a right to a vaccine passport? In the United States and elsewhere, vaccine passports have existed for over a...
Heather Walter McCabe
This chapter "rewrites" Smith v. Rasmussen, 249 F.3d 755 (8th Cir. 2001), which affirmed Iowa’s Medicaid agency's refusal to cover gender affirmation...
Sonia M. Suter
This article examines the technologies of pre-implantation genetic testing (PGT) and germline gene editing (GGE) and the different potential...
There are over thirty million people ages 44 to 55 in the civilian labor force in the United States, but the law and legal scholarship are largely...
This Essay explores how menopausal bodies are managed and monitored through both menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) and the burgeoning market for...
“It is horrendous, but then it’s magnificent,” says one character about menopause in an episode of the 2019 Netflix comedy Fleabag. Her younger...
More
The sale of organs and gametes, the use of commercial surrogates, and trade in blood and plasma are examples of what have been termed "contested...
Kate M. Nicholson
The COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented natural disasters of 2020 remind us of the importance of emergency preparedness. This Article contributes...
Menopause is defined by its relationship to menstruation––it is the cessation of menstruation. Medical texts identify menopause as part of the cycle...
Linda C. McClain
Gendered inequalities are on the frontlines of COVID-19. The catalogue of COVID-19’s impact covers all aspects of women's lives: work, family...
Kate M. Nicholson
Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat Associated System (CRISPR-Cas9) is evolving as a multi-faceted technology that can help in...
Philip J. Cook
In "Consentability," Nancy Kim tackles an important and current topic—in an age of increasing options about how to live, die, and procreate, what...
In the last several decades, individuals have advanced civil rights claims that rely on the language of medicine. This Article is the first to define...
Health data regulation can be thought of at two levels. First, the micro- level of regulation has to do with Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Second...
This paper explores a series of thought experiments that postulate the existence of “artificially intelligent law.” An artificially-intelligent legal...
Resident Faculty
Resident Faculty
Disability law, health law and antidiscrimination law
Family law, trusts and estates, feminist jurisprudence, reproductive technology, and aging and the law
Health policy, LGBTQ rights
Securities, corporate and derivatives law, taboo markets
Social science in law, mental health law, forensic psychiatry
Food and drug law, health law, animal law
Other Faculty
Susan J. Banks
Lecturer
Ramy Fayed
Lecturer
Peter T. Grossi
Lecturer
Michaela Lieberman
Lecturer
Rob Poggenklass
Lecturer
Christopher A. Ripple
Lecturer
Lois Shepherd
Peter A. Wallenborn, Jr. and Dolly F. Wallenborn Professor of Biomedical Ethics, University of Virginia
Professor of Public Health Sciences
Professor of Law
Gil Siegal
Director, Center for Health Law and Bioethics, Kiryat Ono College
Amy Walters
Lecturer
J.D.-M.P.H. Program
Instituted in 2003 by the School of Law, the School of Medicine and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the dual degree in public health, offered in conjunction with the Department of Public Health Sciences, offers concentrations in generalist practice and research and in health policy, law and ethics. The M.P.H. program features close collaboration with the federal Centers for Disease Control and with state and local public health offices in Virginia.
J.D.-M.D. Program
Designed to educate the next generation of health leaders, the J.D.-M.D. program allows students to complete law and medical degrees in six years, instead of the seven years normally required if the degrees were pursued separately. Students spend the first three years and the summer of year five in classes at the School of Medicine, and years four and five at the Law School. In the final year, one semester is spent in each school. Students are required to secure admission separately to the School of Medicine and UVA Law through the normal admissions processes of the two schools.
The University of Virginia will offer a new dual-degree option, the J.D.-M.D. , starting this fall. The program, a partnership between the School of Law and the School of Medicine, is one of 15 dual degrees offered at UVA Law and joins the J.D.-M.P.H. program to become the second joint degree the
Courses and Seminars
The following is a list of courses offered during 2021-24. Numbers in parentheses indicate which academic year(s) the courses were offered, i.e., 2021-22 is coded (22), 2022-23 is coded (23) and 2023-24 is coded (24). (SC) stands for short course and (YR) stands for yearlong.
Advanced LawTech (22)
After Dobbs (SC) (23)
American Food Governance (22)
Bioethics And Law Internship Seminar: Health Policy and Administration (22,23,24)
Bioethics and the Law Seminar (22,24)
Cannabis Legalization (SC) (24)
Covid and Contracts: Courts, Regulation and Drafting (SC) (22)
Current Topics in Law, Medicine and Society (SC) (22,23,24)
Disability Law (22,24)
Drug Product Liability Litigation Seminar (22,23,24)
Drug Product Liability Litigation: Principles and Practice (22,23,24)
Exercises in Rulemaking: Society, Technology and the Law (SC) (22)
Food and Drug Law (22,24)
Food Systems Law and Policy (23)
Genetics and the Law (SC) (22,24)
Genetics and the Law: Exercises in Rulemaking (SC) (23)
Health Care Marketplace: Competition, Regulation and Reform (SC) (23)
Health Law Survey (23,24)
Law and Ethics of Biotechnology (23)
Law and the Social Determinants of Health (24)
Lessons From COVID-19 (22)
Medicalization and the Law (22,23)
Mental Health Law (24)
New Frontiers in Neuroethics and Law (SC) (22)
Reproductive Ethics and Law (SC) (22,23,24)
Reproductive Rights and Justice (24)
Ten-Year Checkup of the Affordable Care Act (24)
After Dobbs (SC) (23)
American Food Governance (22)
Bioethics And Law Internship Seminar: Health Policy and Administration (22,23,24)
Bioethics and the Law Seminar (22,24)
Cannabis Legalization (SC) (24)
Covid and Contracts: Courts, Regulation and Drafting (SC) (22)
Current Topics in Law, Medicine and Society (SC) (22,23,24)
Disability Law (22,24)
Drug Product Liability Litigation Seminar (22,23,24)
Drug Product Liability Litigation: Principles and Practice (22,23,24)
Exercises in Rulemaking: Society, Technology and the Law (SC) (22)
Food and Drug Law (22,24)
Food Systems Law and Policy (23)
Genetics and the Law (SC) (22,24)
Genetics and the Law: Exercises in Rulemaking (SC) (23)
Health Care Marketplace: Competition, Regulation and Reform (SC) (23)
Health Law Survey (23,24)
Law and Ethics of Biotechnology (23)
Law and the Social Determinants of Health (24)
Lessons From COVID-19 (22)
Medicalization and the Law (22,23)
Mental Health Law (24)
New Frontiers in Neuroethics and Law (SC) (22)
Reproductive Ethics and Law (SC) (22,23,24)
Reproductive Rights and Justice (24)
Ten-Year Checkup of the Affordable Care Act (24)
Clinics
Civil Rights Clinic (YR) (22,23,24)
Health and Disability Law Clinic (YR) (22,23,24)
A National Academies committee chaired by University of Virginia School of Law professor Margaret Foster Riley released a report that recommended including pregnant and lactating women in clinical research. The news is among other achievements and recognition for members of the Law School community.
Experts increasingly use the language of medicine and disability to address social issues like poverty and racial discrimination. Professors Craig Konnoth of UVA Law and Karen M. Tani of Penn Law discuss how we got here.
Centers and Organizations
Student Organization
Health Law Association
The Health Law Association is open to all law, LL.M., medical, graduate and undergraduate students. The group sponsors speakers and seminars in the health law field throughout the year and organizes social activities with medical and other graduate students.
Research Project
MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study
The public perception that mental disorder is strongly associated with violence drives both legal policy (e.g., civil commitment) and social practice (e.g., stigma) toward people with mental disorders. This study describes and characterizes the prevalence of community violence in a sample of people recently discharged from acute psychiatric facilities at three sites.
UVA Organizations
Department of Public Health Sciences
By assembling a multidisciplinary team and combining the expertise of the basic clinical sciences of biostatistics, clinical epidemiology, health services research, and informatics, the Department aims to provide a better understanding of the relationships among biologic discoveries, patient and population characteristics, treatment options, public health interventions, systems, and outcomes.
Center for Health Humanities & Ethics
The Center for Health Humanities & Ethics is a diverse interprofessional community of scholars, teachers, and practitioners whose interests in the human dimensions of illness, health, and health care bridge clinical and social sciences, arts and humanities, ethics and law, philosophy and religion.
Center for Global Health
The Center cultivates and promotes interdisciplinary activities to support Global Health that involve the collaboration of departments, centers, as well as professionals and students from across the university. The Center is dedicated to alleviating diseases of poverty.
Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy
The Institute offers training, educational, research, and service programs in the areas of forensic psychiatry, forensic psychology, and mental health law. Affiliated with the University's Law School, School of Medicine, and its College of Arts & Sciences, the Institute has an interdisciplinary faculty of attorneys, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. Its Forensic Psychiatry Clinic performs clinical evaluations in a wide variety of civil and criminal cases. The Institute conducts training programs for the Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Substance Abuse Services and provides continuing education for attorneys and judges. The institute also conducts extensive empirical and theoretical research in clinical criminology, forensic psychiatry/psychology, and mental health law and policy.
Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life
The Institute fosters scholarship, education, and research in practical ethics. To this end, the Institute provides an intellectual home for faculty and students from across the University who wish to pursue interdisciplinary scholarship, research, and teaching on the complex ethical issues that underline contemporary professions, organizations, and public policy. Additionally, the Institute aims to connect, create and support programs in practical ethics throughout the University and thus create a model for ethics as an integral part of undergraduate, graduate, and professional education.
Center for Community-Based Health Equity
The Center for Community-Based Health Equity includes a group of behavioral and implementation scientists and staff who focus on the development, implementation, and sustainability of evidence-based behavioral interventions targeting cancer control priorities for rural communities.
School of Medicine
The School of Medicine is a nationally recognized, medium-sized school with balanced programs of undergraduate and graduate medical education and with biomedical research programs nationally recognized for their stature and productivity. Law students have the opportunity to interact with faculty, residents, and students from many departments in the medical school, including the Department of Public Health Sciences and the Center for Global Health.
Alice Abrokwa, a U.S. Education Department lawyer with expertise in disability law, health law and antidiscrimination law, will join the University of Virginia School of Law faculty this summer.
UVA Law alumni in leading health-related industries discuss the impact of COVID-19 and the unique challenges presented by the pandemic. The panelists are Thomas Moriarty ’89, CVS Health; Sandy van der Vaart ’93, LabCorp; Michael McAlevey ’89, GE Healthcare; and Michael Lampert ’03, Ropes & Gray, with an introduction by Dean Risa Goluboff. This event was sponsored by the Health Law Association and the Virginia Journal of Law & Technology.
Event Sponsors and Lecture Series
UVA Forum on Health Law and Policy
The Forum gives faculty and students from the Schools of Law and Medicine (and elsewhere in the University) the chance to present works in progress.
Sadie Lewis Webb Program in Law and Biomedicine/Health Policy Lecture Series
Established by Earl "Duke" Collier, Law Class of 1973 in 2002 in honor of his grandmother, the Program sponsors the Sadie Lewis Webb Visiting Scholar, faculty workshops, scholarly lunch discussions, informal seminars, medical center hour presentations and symposium on health, human rights and ethics. The inaugural visitor was Dr. Albert Jonsen in October 2002 and Alta Charo in January and March of 2004. More
P. Browning Hoffman Memorial Lecture
The P. Browning Hoffman Memorial Lecture in Law and Psychiatry was established by the University of Virginia School of Law as a tribute to the life and work of P. Browning Hoffman, who held joint appointments as Professor of Law and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and was the founding director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy.
Previous Lecturers
- Jennifer Skeem, Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley
- Jeffrey Swanson, Ph.D., Duke University
- Alan Stone, M.D., Harvard University
- Seymour Halleck, M.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
- Norval Morris, L.L.B., L.L.M., Ph.D., University of Chicago
- Loren Roth, M.D., M.P.H., University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
- Paul S. Appelbaum, M.D., University of Massachusetts Medical School
- Tom Grisso, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Medical School
- John Gunn, M.D. University of London
- Robert A. Burt, M.A., J.D. Yale University
- Semyon Gluzman, M.D., Ukrainian Psychiatric Association
- Stephen J. Morse of the University of Pennsylvania Law School
The University of Virginia hosted the Affordable Care Act Conference in March, designed in tandem with Professor Margaret Foster Riley’s course surveying health care reform since the act’s implementation 10 years ago.
A panel of activists and scholars discuss how neighborhood zoning policies, uneven environmental protection rules and “proactive” police enforcement can negatively affect health outcomes in minority communities. The panel featured Vernice Miller-Travis, executive vice president of Metropolitan Group; Marianne Engelman-Lado, a lecturer at Yale and a visiting professor at Vermont Law School; and Jeffrey A. Fagan, a Columbia Law School professor. David Toscano ’86, a former delegate and minority leader of the Virginia House of Delegates, served as moderator. This panel was part of the symposium “Healing Hate: A Public Health Perspective on Civil Rights in America,” hosted by the University of Virginia Schools of Law, Medicine and Nursing.
News
October 13, 2008
The election system needs reform to keep residents of long-term care facilities safe from political disenfranchisement and voter fraud, a bioethicist said Friday at the Law School. “Simply put, the decision to leave the current system as it is is an unacceptable decision,” Dr. Jason Karlawish told a
October 2, 2008
The University of Virginia's Institute on Aging will host a conference focusing on the problems and issues of voting by seniors in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. The conference will be held Friday, Oct. 10, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Caplin Pavilion at the Law School. Professor
September 23, 2008
A leading figure of one of the nation’s biggest nonprofit health care providers addressed the obstacles to state-based health care reform at a Law School lecture Thursday. Patricia Lynch, vice president of state government relations services at Kaiser Permanente, highlighted her involvement in
September 12, 2008
National health care reform experts will speak at the Law School this year during a series of lectures sponsored by the Law School's Sadie Lewis Webb Program in Law and Biomedicine. Speakers from the National Institutes of Health, the American Association for Retired Persons, the Heritage Foundation
April 29, 2008
Each November nearly a million Guatemalans of Mayan descent trek to the country's southern coast, where they stay in camps and work for the coffee industry until April. Away from their homes and families, the workers may engage in risky behavior that could further exacerbate one of the highest rates
April 28, 2008
Barbara A. Spellman, an expert in the field of psychology and the law, will join the University of Virginia Law School faculty in August. Spellman will hold a joint appointment, teaching half of her courses in the Law School and half in UVA's Department of Psychology, where she has taught since 1997
April 18, 2008
Medical research on humans that could benefit future generations seems like a noble cause and those participating in it could be seen as heroes. Still, law students should examine the underlying ethical issues of such research, according to Alan Milstein, a nationally known bioethics litigator. Alan
January 30, 2008
University of Virginia law professor George Cohen has lodged an informal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission regarding potential legal ethics and antitrust violations triggered by what could be a multibillion-dollar settlement agreement over the controversial painkiller Vioxx.
December 21, 2007
Law professor Richard J. Bonnie is chair of Virginia's Commission on Mental Health Law Reform. Bonnie also directs the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. This morning Virginia's Commission on Mental Health Law Reform released a preliminary report calling
October 22, 2007
Professor Richard Bonnie , who recently served as chair of the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Committee on Reducing Tobacco Use, testified before the House Subcommittee on Health on the bill HR1108, which would among other things give the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products. His testimony
October 11, 2007
Law school students gathered on Oct. 4 to witness a debate between Scott Ballenger, counsel for Abigail Alliance, and Richard Cooper, former chief counsel for the FDA, on whether or not terminally ill patients have a constitutional right of access to developmental drugs. The Abigail Alliance is
June 7, 2007
Health care providers could save millions of dollars and years of litigating medical malpractice claims under a proposed "early offer" statute that also benefits patients, new research shows. Prof. Jeffrey O'Connell Law School professor Jeffrey O'Connell proposed the plan in the May/June 2007 issue
May 25, 2007
A new Institute of Medicine (IOM) report released yesterday recommends tough measures to reduce U.S. smoking rates, including giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) broad regulatory authority over tobacco marketing, packaging, and distribution. University of Virginia law professor Richard
April 18, 2007
The second generation of antipsychotic drugs, introduced in the 1980s and 1990s, are not more effective than the first generation produced decades earlier, a recent news-making study revealed.
April 4, 2007
Third-year law student Tom Chen is the recipient of the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law's 2006 award for student writing for his article examining the controversial practice in which brand-name drug companies release generic versions of their own drug after their patent is challenged.
February 26, 2007
Under international pressure and desiring to bolster its role as leader in the global fight against AIDS, the U.S. government will likely change its immigration and visa policies that now restrict those with HIV from entering the country, said Phillip Nieburg, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs in Washington, D.C.
January 5, 2007
Thanks to a $1 million gift from the Richmond-based Burford Leimenstoll Foundation, the University of Virginia Child Health Advocacy Program will be able to expand its legal aid and referral services for families whose children are treated at the University of Virginia Children's Hospital.
November 14, 2006
U.Va. law professor Thomas Hafemeister and psychiatry professor Shelly Jackson have received a grant of nearly $300,000 from the National Institute of Justice to investigate financial abuse and other forms of mistreatment of the elderly in Virginia.
October 12, 2006
Law professor Richard Bonnie is leading a state-wide commission to recommend extensive changes to Virginia's mental health laws.
September 1, 2006
The Law School's Family Advocacy Program has been awarded $125,000 from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund to improve legal aid to economically disadvantaged families who have problems that affect their children's health.
University of California, Berkeley professor Jennifer Skeem discusses empirical guidance for shifting programs and practices to improve outcomes for high-need, high-risk populations involved in the justice system. Skeem’s talk was the 18th P. Browning Hoffman Memorial Lecture in Law and Psychiatry, sponsored by the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, and the University’s schools of Law and Medicine. UVA Law professors Richard Bonnie ’69 and John Monahan introduce the event.