Current Issues in Law and Medicine

This seminar, cross-listed in the School of Law and the School of Medicine, explores contemporary issues in law and medicine from an interdisciplinary perspective. A unique feature of the course will be the planned class composition: roughly equal enrollment of JD students and MD students. The course will address legal topics impacting the practice of medicine and the delivery of health care, with the aim of having students appreciate both the relevant law and the broader legal and medical context. The course will consider, for example, where legal and medical analysis and differing professional orientations complement each other and where they may be in tension, and why this is the case. The course will provide students from both professional schools the context they will need to communicate across disciplines. To facilitate interdisciplinary connections, teams of JD and MD students will work together on in-class presentations or other group projects that explore the legal and medical considerations surrounding a subject. Topics for the course will run the gamut from health care organization and financing to patient care issues. Specific topics may include, for example:

1. informed consent;
2. organ transplant regulation;
3. end-of-life care and medical futility disputes;
4. health care fraud and abuse laws;
5. infectious disease surveillance and disease reporting laws;
6. regulation of medical research;
7. medical staff disputes and the law of hospital-physician relations;
8. the different legal rules applicable to tax-exempt and nonprofit health care organizations and how this affects their interactions with physicians, patients, and payers; and
9. regulation of reproductive health care.

For JD students, this course will draw on some of the concepts that are introduced in Health Law Bioethics and Quality of Care and Health Law Organization, Regulation and Finance; for MD students, the course will draw on concepts covered in the first-year Humanities and Social Science curriculum. Because the course is designed to foster independent research by JD students, it is suitable for students with an interest in the field even if they have no prior health law coursework.

Recommended: Health Law Bioethics and Quality of Care; or Health Law Organization, Regulation and Finance; or experience in the health field may be helpful but not required.