In Practice
The Science, Health, and Information Clinic practices law for clients, in the real world of law and policy. Our work is student-led, under faculty supervision. Student attorneys in the clinic fully inhabit the role of the lawyer, gaining real-world experience. For example, they:
- Interview clients to understand their values and goals.
- Help clients develop and implement a long-term legal strategy.
- Advise clients on key decisions.
- Organize and lead meetings with clients, policymakers, and civil society coalitions.
Conduct factual and legal research, writing, editing, negotiating, filing, planning, oral advocacy, and other day-to-day work the project entails.
Every semester, the clinic takes on a diverse set of projects that offers students broad exposure to different areas of science, technology, law, and policy, even as student attorneys immerse themselves deeply in one or two projects of their own. Students are matched to their projects based on their personal interests and career goals.
Exemplary Projects and Areas of Focus
In prior years, students have worked with Associate Clinical Professor of Law Christopher Morten to:
- Collaborate with PrEP4All to advocate that the U.S. government bring a first-of-its-kind patent infringement lawsuit against a brand-name drug company to recoup public investment in HIV research.
- Challenge, on behalf of PrEP4All, a drug company’s efforts to extend its patent monopoly on HIV prevention medication by filing an administrative petition at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
- Work with PrEP4All to publish a practical white paper that explains how federal policymakers could employ a long-standing but neglected federal statute—28 U.S.C. § 1498—to use privately held patents on the public’s behalf and thereby lower drug prices.
- Publish a report that analyzes a foundational patent on coronavirus vaccines owned by the U.S. government and advocates assertion of the patent to increase global access to COVID-19 vaccines.
- Help #insulin4all activists at T1International develop and submit formal written comments urging the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to improve training for examiners of pharmaceutical and biotechnology patents, increase information sharing with the FDA, and expand public participation in the patent process.
- File amicus briefs in the Northern District of Texas, Fifth Circuit, and U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Doctors for America, in support of the FDA’s approval and regulation of mifepristone, a leading medication abortion drug.
- File an amicus brief in the Fourth Circuit on behalf of Doctors for America, to challenge a West Virginia law that effects a facto ban on mifepristone, a leading medication abortion drug, and conflicts with federal FDA law.
In prior years, students have worked with Morten to:
- Counsel ml5.js, maintainers of an open-source machine learning library, on the development of an open-source IP license and an associated living code of conduct, to discourage discriminatory and other harmful uses of artificial intelligence.
- Submit a comment to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services identifying a gap in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule that subjects transgender, HIV-positive, and other people to discrimination in health care.
- Analyze and advocate for “shield laws” that protect the data privacy of people seeking and providing abortion and gender-affirming health care.
In prior years, students have worked with Morten to:
- Bring and win an Administrative Procedure Act lawsuit on behalf of two medical researchers, Charles Seife and Peter Lurie, against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to vindicate the public’s right to obtain important scientific data via the ClinicalTrials.gov website.
- Use the Freedom of Information Act to investigate the Food and Drug Administration’s and National Institutes of Health’s plans to enforce a federal scientific data-sharing statute, on behalf of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines.
- Counsel Doctors Without Borders on legislative and regulatory advocacy to provide public access to information on the true costs of biomedical research.
- Litigate, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a motion to unseal secret documents in a patent infringement dispute in federal district court, to safeguard the public’s right to access information in important technology cases.
- Petition the FDA to improve clinical trial transparency through enforcement of the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA), on behalf of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, and win a significant transparency victory.
