Health Law

Health law encompasses matters of life and death, human dignity, and personal autonomy. Sharp changes in the direction of government such as those we've recently experienced can dramatically affect legal policy and law. There have been in the past year, and will be during the semester, changes in public and private insurance accessibility, reproductive rights, probably physician speech in the area of gender conforming care, and undoubtedly other areas. We'll examine these changes and also ongoing issues related to the extent to which there is (or should be) an enforceable right to health care, and the public and private health insurance systems that do (or could) facilitate improvements in health status; the effects of shifting antidiscrimination laws on access to health services; the legal framework of patient/physician relationships; the conflicts that arise between individuals' privacy and autonomy rights and the state's interests in areas including abortion, artificial reproductive technologies, end of life treatment, organ transplantation; and the administration of public health laws. The through-line of the course is the tension between individual rights and interests on one hand, and shifting conceptions of state authority and power on the other - all in the context of health-related structures and services.