Recent Highlights

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  Patients without borders: I. Glenn Cohen on the rise of medical tourism

  Medical tourism—patients traveling from their home countries to another destination for medical care—is completely transforming the health care industry as we know it. Once the province of the uber-wealthy seeking radical cosmetic surgeries or treatments unavailable in the U.S., medical tourism has become an attractive option for many, especially the uninsured, since the cost savings are so dramatic. And with the advent of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, medical tourism will increase as insurance companies look to cut costs, predicts I. Glenn Cohen '03, a Harvard Law professor and one of the world's leading experts on medical tourism.

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  A question of balance: intellectual diversity in legal education (video)

  At Harvard Law School on April 5, a panel of four leading legal scholars examined a single question: Is there a lack of intellectual diversity at law schools?

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  A No Vote on ID Laws

  Harvard Law School Professor D. James Greiner is co-author of a recent study on the experience of Boston voters in the election of 2008. As another election approaches, we ask Greiner a few questions about his study and the current efforts to pass tougher voter ID laws.

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  A radical fix for the republic

  Lawrence Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at HLS and director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, is the author of “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It,” an exhaustively researched and passionately argued indictment of Capitol Hill and the money-centered daily dance between lawmakers and lobbyists. As a columnist for Atlantic Magazine and in interviews on national media, he has shared his ideas on how to stop corruption in Congress. He was recently profiled in a Harvard Magazine piece by Jonathan Shaw entitled “A Radical Fix for the Republic.”

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  In new book, Shugerman explores the history of judicial selection in the U.S.

  When Assistant Professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman was a law student at Yale, former Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Penny White spoke as a guest in one of his classes. White was a pro-death penalty Democrat who had voted in one case to overturn a death sentence. When she ran to keep her seat, conservative groups rallied against her. She ultimately lost. “Her story raised basic questions for me as a law student about the relationship between law and politics,” Shugerman says now. His interest in the subject couldn’t be more relevant. Today, about 90 percent of state judges must run for office, and the elections have become increasingly expensive and nasty. Shugerman provides historical perspective on judicial elections and other methods of judicial selection in his new book, “The People’s Courts: Pursuing Judicial Independence in America” (Harvard, 2012).

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  The future of human subjects research regulation

  Leading experts in the fields of law, science, and medicine gathered at Harvard Law School May 18 and 19 to discuss the future of human subjects research regulation. The topic for the conference, sponsored by HLS’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, was prompted by a July 2011 advanced notice of proposed rulemaking from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposing to amend the rule that has governed this research for more than 20 years.

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  Palfrey and Gasser book launch: ‘Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems’ (video)

  Harvard Law School Professor John Palfrey ’01 and Urs Gasser LL.M. '03, lecturer on law and executive director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, launched their latest book, Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems, at a May 30 event hosted by the Berkman Center, the Harvard Law School Library and the Harvard Book Store.

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  Professor Mary Ann Glendon appointed to commission on religious freedom

  In May, Harvard Law School Professor Mary Ann Glendon, who served as the former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, was appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent, bipartisan federal body that is principally responsible for reviewing the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and making policy recommendations to the president, secretary of state, and Congress.

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  Wilkins and Vermeule elected into Academy of Arts and Sciences

  Harvard Law Professors David Wilkins ‘80 and Adrian Vermeule ’93 have been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wilkins, the Lester Kissel Professor of Law, is director of the Program on the Legal Profession and vice dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession. Vermeule is a leading scholar of administrative law and constitutional law and theory.