J.D. Concentration Health Law

Health Law is now a complicated, heterogeneous domain of law. Practicing Health Law may call for special skills in corporate law, bioethics, family law, Internet and technology law, and tort law, as well as in other areas of law.

The Health Law concentration program thus recognizes that to prepare students for the careers in Health Law, they must have significant flexibility to design programs of study that allow them to take advantage of the Law School's broad curriculum while offering the opportunity for greater specialization.

Accordingly, students may select between a general Concentration in Health Law and more specialized programs of study in Health Law and Bioethics and Health Law: Institutional Structures and Financing.

Faculty Concentration Advisors and Advisement

Professors Janet Dolgin, Jennifer Gundlach, Ashira Ostrow and Vern Walker serve as concentration faculty advisors for this Concentration. Concentration faculty advisors may modify the Concentration requirements in exceptional circumstances upon notice to the Dean.

Guidance from a student’s concentration faculty advisor is an important element of successful completion of the Concentration. A concentration faculty advisor must approve a student’s enrollment in the Concentration.

Students should meet with their advisor as soon as they find themselves interested in the Concentration, but in no event later than the course selection deadline for their fourth semester of study (or fifth semester of study for part-time students). At the initial meeting, students will select one track among the three offered (including the General Health Law track.)

An advisor may permit a student to enroll in the Concentration at a later date, but only after determining that the student can realistically meet the requirements of the Concentration prior to graduation.

Once enrolled in the Concentration, students must meet with their faculty advisor at least once per semester, prior to that semester’s course selection deadline, in order to plan their course selection and review their progress in fulfilling the Concentration's requirements.

A student's concentration faculty advisor must also review and approve the concentration writing requirement.

Course Requirements

Required Core Courses:

Courses required of all students concentrating in Health Law:

• Health Law
• Bioethics and the Law or both Clinical Bioethics I and Clinical Bioethics II
• Special Problems Seminar: Health Law

Advanced Courses:

A student enrolled in the Health Law and Bioethics track must take at least two of the following courses:

• Constitutional Issues in Health Law
• Elder Law
• Law and Medicine Together
• Law and Psychiatry
• The Law of Medical Product Discovery, Development, and Commercialization
• Law’s Response to Reproductive Technology
• Legal Decision Making for Children and Incompetent Adults v. Representing Health Care Providers
• Mental Health Issues in the Criminal Justice System
• Public Health Law, Policy and Ethics
• Sexuality and the Law

A student enrolled in the Health Law: Institutional Structures and Financing track must take at least two of the following courses:

• Administrative Health Law
• Constitutional Issues in Health Law
• Elder Law
• The Law of Medical Product Discovery, Development, and Commercialization
• Managed Care and the Evolution of the Doctor-Patient Relationship
• Medical Malpractice
• Medicare and Medicaid Law
• Negotiation and Alternative Dispute Resolution, An International Perspective
• Products Liability
• Public Health Law, Policy and Ethics
• Representing Health Care Providers
• Scientific Evidence

A student enrolled in the General Health Law track must take at least two of the advanced courses listed above (selected in consultation with the student’s concentration faculty advisor).

Each student concentrating in Health Law must take at least one additional course, to be selected in consultation with the student’s concentration faculty advisor. (This applies to students in the general track and to students in the specialized tracks.)

Students must take at least 15 credits in the Concentration. Thus, some students will be required to take two (rather than one) additional courses.

Skills Courses:

Each student in the Health Law Concentration must take a course with an “experiential component.” This may be the Health Law and Policy Clinic, a Health Law demonstration project or a course that includes simulations (selected in consultation with the student’s advisor).

In addition, enrollment in other clinics that now exist may fulfill the Concentration’s “experiential” requirement. Identification of relevant clinics will depend on a student’s individual program of study within the Concentration; relevant clinics will be selected in consultation with the student’s concentration faculty advisor.

Writing Requirement

A student must complete a significant writing project in any course, or via any Journal note or Independent Study, on a topic related to the Concentration, as approved by the student’s concentration faculty advisor.

Normally, the writing project for this Concentration will be eligible for Writing Credit I. However, with the agreement of a student’s concentration faculty advisor, a writing project that fulfills Writing Credit II may fulfill the Concentration writing requirement.

It is permissible for the writing used to satisfy this requirement be the same writing used by the student to satisfy another Law School requirement.

Minimum GPA

A minimum GPA of 3.1 is required at the time of application for the Health Law Concentration.

A GPA of 3.1 need not be maintained throughout a student’s time in the Concentration; however, a student must graduate with a GPA of 3.1 or higher in order to be awarded credit for the Concentration.