I. Glenn Cohen

Academic Fellow, 2006-08

igcohen@law.harvard.edu
23 Everett St., Room 322
Office: 617-496-6384

 

Glenn has accepted an appointment as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Law School, begining in the
2008-2009 academic year.

Mr. Cohen’s past scholarship has included work on ADR approaches to end-of-life decisionmaking, pediatric research ethics, preembryo disposition agreements and commodification. His initial fellowship project concerns the normative and doctrinal implications of unbundling procreative rights.

This project unbundles the asserted rights not to be a genetic, legal, and gestational parents, and examines the repercussions of this unbundling for constitutional law, contracts, and bioethics.  In particular, he is interested in the grounds for recognizing each of these rights and its implications for allowing individuals to waive them through contract and other means.  The first part of this project was published in the Stanford Law Review, the second is forthcoming in the Southern California Law Review.  

Other projects of interest include:

• An investigation of bans on the sale of sperm and egg.  This project comprises an empirical analysis of the effect the adoption of such bans have had on supply and access to gametic material for assisted reproduction, and a normative evaluation of whether such bans are justified.
  
  
• An examination of the extent to which subsidization of reproductive technology (for example, through insurance must-carry provisions) has caused individuals to select against adoption, and a normative evaluation of this effect.
  
  
• A legal and ethical analysis of “medical tourism,” for example, American patients (with the blessing or encouragement of insurers) traveling abroad to India for cardiac care.
  
  In Spring 2008, Mr. Cohen is teaching a seminar at the law school entitled “Genetics and Reproductive Technology: Legal and Ethical Issues.”

 

Bibliography

The Right Not to Be a Genetic Parent?
81 S. Cal. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming, 2008)

The Constitution and the Rights not to Procreate
60 Stanford L. Rev. 1135 ( 2008)

Negotiating Death: ADR and End of Life Decisionmaking, 9 Harv. Negotiation L. Rev. 253 (2004)

Therapeutic Orphans, Pediatric Victims? The Best Pharmaceuticals for Children’s Act and Existing Federal Human Subject Protections, 58 Food Drug L. J. 661 (2003)

Note, The Price of Everything, the Value of Nothing: Reframing the Commodification Debate, 117 Harv. L. Rev. 689 (2003)
                                                               
Note, Gore, Gibson, and Goldsmith: The Evolution of Internet Metaphors in Law and Commentary, 16 Harv. J. L. Tech. 265 (2002) (with Jonathan Blavin)
                                                               

Shorter Works

Case Comment, J.B. v M.B., 115 Harv. L. Rev. 701 (2001)

Negotiating in the Shadow of Death, Dispute Resolution Magazine 12 (Fall 2004)

Administrative Developments: HHS Announces New Human Subject Research Guidelines for IRBs, 28 J. L. Med. & Ethics 305 (2000)

Presentations

• What Ethics Committee Members Need to Know About Law: Physician Assisted Suicide and Terminal Sedation
  Harvard Medical School, Conference, November 16, 2007.
  
  
• Abigail Alliance v. Eschenbach, and the Future of FDA's Regulation of Experimental Drugs
  Panel, Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, Harvard Law School, November 12, 2007.
  Panel, American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., October 19, 2007.
  
  
• Unbundling the Rights not to Procreate
  Harvard Medical School, Research In Progress Workshop, April 20, 2007.
  Harvard Law School, Petrie-Flom Center Workshop, January 31, 2007.
  
  
• Abigail Alliance, Substantive Due Process, and Access to Experimental Drugs
  Guest Lecturer in Michelle Mello’s Public Health Law course, Harvard Law School, April 11, 2007.
  
  
• Negotiating Death: ADR and End of Life Decisionmaking
  University of Pennsylvania Law School, March 17, 2006.
  Abbington Memorial Hospital, March 17, 2006.
  Harvard Law School, November 11, 2004.
  
  

• Commodification and Procreative Rights
  Symposium: Beginning-and End-of-Life Technologies and Core Constitutional Values, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., February 18, 2005.
  
  

Research Interests

• Health Law (including Bioethics, Food & Drug Law, and Public Health Law)
• Contracts
• Alternative Dispute Resolution
• Civil Proceedure
• Family Law (especially Reproductive Technology)
  
  

Professional Affiliations and Memberships

Admitted to the New York Bar in January 2003.  Admitted to practice in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and D.C. Circuits.

Reviewer for the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.

Education

• Harvard Law School, J.D., magna cum laude, 2003
  • Sears Prize (2001)
  • Editor, Harvard Law Review
  • Hewlett Fellow in Law and Negotiation, Program on Negotiation
• University of Toronto, Honors B.A. (Bioethics/Philosophy and Psychology), high distinction, 2000
  
  

Previous Experience

2004-2006, Honors Program attorney in the Appellate Staff of the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division. Acted as lead counsel in over 12 Circuit Court cases, and represented the United States in the U.S. Supreme Court, in conjunction with the Solicitor General’s office.

2003-2004, Clerk for Chief Judge Michael Boudin, U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.