 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Health Law, Policy, and Bioethics
Health law is a broad and exciting field that is not easily defined. There are, at least, three different, but overlapping, components to health law. First, the field is concerned with the provision of health care within the American health care system— the delivery, financing, and organization of personal medical services. Health care services consume a substantial part of the nation’s Gross National Product. The study of the health care system involves complex judgments about how to allocate health care services: access, equity, justice, quality, and cost. The United States has a highly eclectic health care system involving both private health care (e.g., managed care and fee-for-service) and public health care financing (e.g., Medicare and Medicaid). Second, the field is concerned with bioethics— the ethically and legally appropriate way to structure myriad relationships among health care professionals and patients. Bioethics is concerned with micro-relationships between professionals and patients and concerns itself with enduring issues such as informed consent, confidentiality, and physician fidelity. Bioethics is also concerned with many interesting, emerging issues at the interface of law and society such as the human genome project. Third, the field is concerned with public health. Public health law is concerned with the powers and duties of the state to assure the conditions for populations to be healthy. As a result, public health law is concerned with constitutional powers such as the police power and issues of federalism. Public health discusses many topics that are important to assuring healthy populations including tobacco, infectious diseases, and firearms. The study of health law, policy and ethics, therefore, involves many subjects in a general legal education such as constitutional law, administrative law, local and government law. Scholars in health law also are also interested in specialized legal topics such as disability discrimination law and international law (notably human rights). Georgetown has the most well regarded faculty and resources devoted to health law of any elite law school in the United States. Founded in 2007, the Linda and Timothy O'Neill Institute for Global and National Health Law aims to find innovative solutions for the most pressing health concerns facing the nation and the world through research, scholarship, and reflective engagement with partners in the public and private sectors. In addition to our own faculty, students can benefit from rich resources on our main campus: the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, the Program in Clinical Ethics, and the Institute for Health Care Research and Policy. Additionally, the joint degree program in law and public health with Johns Hopkins University is widely regarded as the best such program. The two Universities offer a combined J.D. and MPH. We also have partnership with Johns Hopkins for a Greenwall Fellowship in Bioethics which has eminent lawyers, physicians, philosophers and nurses. All in all, there is a world of opportunities for students interested in the related fields of health law, policy and ethics at Georgetown. The Law Center has a vast array of courses in the fields of health law, policy and ethics. We have separated our offerings much as described above: health care financing, organization and delivery; bioethics; and public health. Additionally, we have tracks in international health and law and psychiatry. First year students will be interested in the elective called Health and Legal Reasoning. The upper class students will want to take the core classes in each of the respective areas of health law: Health Law and Policy and Public Health Law and Ethics. We also offer a special seminar for our most dedicated students called the Advanced Health Law Seminar which is highly recommended for those interested in pursuing the field seriously. Full-time Faculty: |
|
