Participants
Dr. Joe Cecil
Senior Research Associate and Project Director in the Division of Research, Federal Judicial Center
Joe S. Cecil, J.D., Ph.D., is a Senior Research Associate and Project Director in the Division of Research at the Federal Judicial Center. Currently he is directing the Center’s Program on Scientific and Technical Evidence. As part of this program he served as principal editor of the first two editions of the Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, a third edition of which was recently published in collaboration with the National Academies.
He has served as a member of several panels of the National Academy of Sciences, including the Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Science Community, and presently is serving as a member of the Committee on Science, Technology & Law. He is currently directing a research project that examines the difficulties that arise with expert testimony in federal courts, with an emphasis on clinical medical testimony and forensic science evidence. Other areas of research interest include access to federal courts, federal civil and appellate procedure, jury competence in complex civil litigation, and assessment of rule of law in emerging democracies.
Dr. Cecil received his J.D. and a Ph.D. in psychology from Northwestern University.
Alta Charo
Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin Madison
R. Alta Charo is the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she is on the faculty of the Law School and the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the medical school. She also has served on the faculty of the UW Masters in Biotechnology Studies program and lectured in the MPH program of the Dept. of Population Health Sciences.
Alta Charo (B.A. biology, Harvard 1979; J.D. Columbia, 1982) is an elected member (2004) of the World Technology Network and (2005) the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. And in 2006 she was elected to membership in the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine (IOM). In 2013 she was awarded the Adam Yarmolinsky Medal for her service to the IOM.
Professor Charo served on President Obama’s transition team, where she was a member of the HHS review team, focusing her attention particularly on transition issues related to NIH, FDA, bioethics, stem cell policy, and women’s reproductive health. She was on leave 2009-2011 to serve as a senior policy advisor on emerging technology issues in the Office of the Commissioner at the US Food & Drug Administration.
Professor Charo has authored or contributed to over 100 articles, book chapters and government reports on law and policy related to environmental protection, reproductive health, new reproductive technologies, medical genetics, stem cell research, science funding, and research ethics. She has served as a member of the boards of the Alan Guttmacher Institute and the Foundation for Genetic Medicine, the National Medical Advisory Committee of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the program board of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. She has also been on the boards of the Society for the Advancement of Women’s Health and the former American Association of Bioethics, as well as the ethics advisory board of the Howard. In addition, she has served as a consultant to the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine and the former NIH Office of Protection from Research Risks.
Dr. Holly Doremus
James H. House and Hiram H. Hurd Professor of Environmental Regulation, UC-Berkeley Law School
Holly Doremus is a leading scholar and teacher in the areas of environmental law, natural resources law, and law and science.
Doremus brings a strong background in life sciences and a commitment to interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship to her work at Berkeley Law. She earned her PhD in Plant Physiology from Cornell University and was a post-doctoral associate at the University of Missouri before making the transition to law. In addition to her law school teaching experience, she has taught in the graduate ecology program at UC Davis, in the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley, and at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara. She has been a principal investigator on two major NSF IGERT interdisciplinary training grants and a multidisciplinary grant dealing with hydropower relicensing in California. She has co-authored papers with economists and ecologists, and has been a member of two National Research Council review committees.
Doremus received her JD and Environmental Law Certificate from Berkeley Law, where she was an articles editor for the Ecology Law Quarterly and a member of the Order of the Coif honor society. She then clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, practiced municipal and land use law with the firm of Eickelberg & Fewel in Corvallis, Ore., and taught at the University of Oregon and Oregon State University before beginning her law teaching career at UC Davis in 1995. She is a Member-Scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform and an elected member of the American Law Institute. She was honored as a UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow for 2001-2006.
Eight of Doremus’s articles in the legal literature have been selected for reprinting in the Land Use and Environment Law Review, an annual compilation of the year’s leading works. Her recent publications include Water War in the Klamath Basin: Macho Law, Combat Biology, and Dirty Politics (Island Press, 2008) (with A. Dan Tarlock); “Scientific and Political Integrity in Environmental Policy,” Texas Law Review (2008); “Data Gaps in Natural Resource Management: Sniffing for Leaks Along the Information Pipeline,” Indiana Law Journal (2008); and “Precaution, Science, and Learning While Doing in Natural Resource Management,” Washington Law Review (2007).
Dr. John Deigh
Professor of Philosophy; Professor of Law, University of Texas - Austin
John Deigh joined the Texas faculty in 2003 after more than twenty years of teaching at Northwestern University. He is a professor in both the law school and the philosophy department. His primary areas of research are moral, political, and legal philosophy. He is widely known for his work in moral psychology. He is the author of The Sources of Moral Agency (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Emotions, Values and the Law (Oxford University Press, 2008), and An Introduction to Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2010). His recent articles include “William James and the Rise of Scientific Psychology”, Emotion Review (2014), “Human Rights as Political Rights”, Journal of Social Philosophy (2013), and “Ethics in the Analytic Tradition” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics, R. Crisp, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2013). Dr. Deigh serves on the editorial boards of Ethics, Analytic Philosophy, and Law and Philosophy and is an associate editor of the 9 volume International Encyclopedia of Ethics (Wiley/Blackwell, 2013). From 1997-2008 he was the editor of Ethics. Deigh has held visiting appointments at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago and research fellowships at the Hastings Center and the RSSS of the Australian National University.
Rebecca Dresser
Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law and Professor of Ethics in Medicine, Washington University
Rebecca Dresser, is an expert in biomedical ethics. She holds a joint appointment with Washington University School of Medicine, teaching law and medical students about legal and ethical issues in end-of-life care, biomedical research, genetics, assisted reproduction, and related topics. She has written extensively in her field and is the co-author of a casebook on bioethics and law and a book on the ethical treatment of animals. She is also the author of a book on patient advocacy and research ethics. In addition to her teaching, research, and scholarship, she is on the advisory or editorial boards of several prestigious journals devoted to bioethics. A past member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, she currently sits on the Washington University Medical Center Institutional Review Board, as well as its Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee. Professor Dresser is a prolific speaker and panelist at national and international symposia, conferences, and workshops on such topics as bioethics and cancer; advance treatment directives; stem cell research; biomedical research policy; and human cloning. Before becoming a law professor, she clerked for the Hon. James E. Doyle, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, and held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Psychiatry Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Papers:
Don Elliott
Professor, Yale Law School and Co-Chair of Environmental Practice, Covington & Burling
E. Donald Elliott is Professor (Adjunct) of Law at Yale Law School and a leading academic scholar, as well as practitioner, in the fields of administrative and environmental law. He has been on the Yale Law faculty since 1981 and currently teaches courses in environmental law, energy law, administrative law and civil procedure. He is also senior of counsel in the Washington D.C. office of Covington & Burling LLP, and co-chair of the firm’s Environmental Practice Group. From 2003 until he joined Covington in 2013, he was a partner in Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, chairing the firm’s worldwide Environment, Health and Safety Department.
From 1989 to 1991, Elliott served as Assistant Administrator and General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 1993, he was named to the first endowed chair in environmental law and policy at any major American law school, the Julien and Virginia Cornell Chair in Environmental Law and Litigation at Yale Law School. From 2003-2009, he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, which advises the federal government on environmental issues. Elliott also testifies frequently in Congress on environmental issues.
He has served as a consultant on improving the relationship of law and science to the Federal Courts Study Committee, which was chartered by Congress to make recommendations for improving the federal courts, and to the Carnegie Commission for Law, Science and Government. He co-chaired the National Environmental Policy Institute’s Committee on Improving Science at EPA.
Elliott is a Senior Fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) and an elected member of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, as well as a member of the boards of the Environmental Law Institute, the Center for Clean Air Policy, and NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity. He is the author or co-author of seven books and has published more than 70 articles in professional journals. He was named one of the top 25 environmental attorneys in the United States by the National Law Journal and is highly ranked in Chambers USA: Leading Lawyers for Business; Best Lawyers in America; D.C. Super Lawyers; Who’s Who in American Law; and Who’s Who in the World.
He earned both his B.A., summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and his J.D. from Yale. Following graduation, he was a law clerk for Gerhard Gesell in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and for Chief Judge David Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
David Faigman
John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California Hastings College of Law
David Faigman is the John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law and the Co-Director of the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy. He also holds an appointment as Professor in the School of Medicine (Dept. of Psychiatry) at the University of California, San Francisco.
Professor Faigman received both his M.A. (Psychology) and J.D. from the University of Virginia. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Thomas Reavley of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He is the author of numerous articles and essays. He has authored three books, Constitutional Fictions: A Unified Theory of Constitutional Facts (Oxford, 2008), Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court’s 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law (Henry Holt & Co., 2004) and Legal Alchemy: The Use and Misuse of Science in the Law (W.H. Freeman, 1999). In addition, Professor Faigman is a co-author/co-editor of the five-volume treatise Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony (with Blumenthal, Cheng, Mnookin, Murphy & Sanders) (Thomson Reuters/Westlaw).
Professor Faigman was a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel that investigated the scientific validity of polygraphs and he is a member of the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Network.
Papers:
Nita Farahany
Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, Duke University
Nita A. Farahany is a leading scholar on the ethical, legal, and social implications of biosciences and emerging technologies, particularly those related to neuroscience and behavioral genetics. She is the Director of Duke Science & Society, the Duke MA in Bioethics & Science Policy, and a Professor of Law & Philosophy.
In 2010, Farahany was appointed by President Obama to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, and continues to serve as a member. Her recent scholarship includes “Searching Secrets,” 160 U. Penn. L. Rev. 1239 (2012) which explores the descriptive potential of intellectual property law as a metaphor to describe current Fourth Amendment search and seizure law and predict how the Fourth Amendment will apply to emerging technology. A related article, “Incriminating Thoughts,” 64 Stanford Law Review 351 (2012) demonstrates through modern neuroscience applications the need to redefine the taxonomy of evidence subject to the privilege against self-incrimination. She also is the editor of The Impact of Behavioral Sciences on Criminal Law (Oxford University Press), a book of essays from experts in science, law, philosophy, and policy.
Farahany presents her work widely including to audiences at the Judicial Conferences for the Second and Ninth Circuits, the National Judicial College, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academies of Science Workshops, the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the National Association of Criminal Defense lawyers, the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, and by testifying before Congress. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, Chair of the Criminal Justice Section of the American Association of Law Schools, on the Board of the International Neuroethics Society, and the recipient of the 2013 Paul M. Bator award given annually to an outstanding legal academic under 40.
She received her AB in genetics, cell, and developmental biology at Dartmouth College, a JD and MA from Duke University, as well as a PhD in philosophy; her dissertation was entitled “Rediscovering Criminal Responsibility through Behavioral Genetics.” Farahany also holds an ALM in biology from Harvard University. In 2004-2005, Farahany clerked for Judge Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, after which she joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University. In 2011, Farahany was the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor of Human Rights at Stanford Law School.
Papers:
Liz Fisher
Fellow and Tutor, Professor of Environmental Law, Oxford University
Liz Fisher, BA/LLB (UNSW), D Phil (Oxon) is Professor of Environmental Law at Corpus Christi College and UL lecturer in the Faculty of Law. She researches in the areas of environmental law, risk regulation and administrative law. Much of her work has explored the interrelationship between law, administration and regulatory problems. Her work has an important comparative dimension and she focuses in particular on these issues in the legal cultures of the UK, US, Australia, the EU, and the WTO. Her 2007 book, Risk Regulation and Administrative Constitutionalism, won the SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2008. Recent work has focused on the problems created by interdisciplinarity in regulatory decision-making including the use of models in environmental regulation and the operational consequences of transparency in administrative law. She won an Oxford University Teaching Award in 2009 and was shortlisted for OUP National Law Teacher of the Year Award 2011. She is General Editor of the Journal of Environmental Law and has served as the editor of the Legislation and Reports Section of the Modern Law Review. Fisher convenes the environmental law courses in the Faculty and from October 2013 is Vice-Chair of the Law Board of the Law Faculty.
Papers:
Dr. Norman Fost
Professor Emeritus, Pediatrics and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin Madison
Dr. Norman Fost is a graduate of Princeton (AB), Yale (MD), and Harvard (MPH). He completed residency training in pediatrics and 2 years as Chief Resident at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and a fellowship in the Kennedy Program in Law, Medicine and Ethics at Harvard.
Since 1973 he has been at the University of Wisconsin where he is Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics and Medical History and Bioethics. He founded and was Director of the Program in Bioethics for 40 years. He has chaired the Hospital Ethics Committee for 30 years, and the Health Sciences IRB for 31 years. He was Director of the Pediatric Residency Training Program for 21 years; founder and director of the Child Protection Team for 33 years; and Vice Chair of the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Medical History and Bioethics for 10 years.
He is a consultant to the FDA Pediatric Drug Advisory Committee and past-chair of the FDA Pediatric Ethics Subcommittee; served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Guidelines for Stem Cell Research; and was a member of President Clinton’s Health Care Task Force.
Honors include election to the Princeton University Board of Trustees; the Nellie Westermann Prize for Research Ethics; the William G. Bartholome Award for Excellence in Ethics by the American Academy of Pediatrics; a lifetime achievement award for excellence in human research protection; and induction into the Society of Scholars at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Fost has been a frequent guest on national television shows, including Nightline, Frontline, Crossfire, Donahue, The News Hour, Good Morning America, 20/20, ESPN Sports Center, HBO Real Sports, Charlie Rose, Larry King Live and Oprah, and appears in the documentary film, “Bigger, Stronger, Faster.”
Dr. Sheila Jasanoff
Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School
Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. A pioneer in her field, she has authored more than 100 articles and chapters and is author or editor of a dozen books, including Controlling Chemicals, The Fifth Branch, Science at the Bar, and Designs on Nature. Her work explores the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies, with particular attention to the nature of public reason. She was founding chair of the STS Department at Cornell University and has held numerous distinguished visiting appointments in the US, Europe, and Japan. Jasanoff served on the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and as President of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Her grants and awards include a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship and an Ehrenkreuz from the Government of Austria. She holds AB, JD, and PhD degrees from Harvard, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Twente.
Papers:
Judge Cheryl Johnson
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
Judge Cheryl Johnson was elected to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on November 3, 1998.
Judge Johnson received her high school diploma from Whetstone High School, Columbus, Ohio, in 1964. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry from Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, in 1968, her M.S. in Inorganic Crystallography from the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, in 1970 and her J.D. with high distinction from The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Illinois, in 1983. From 1983 to 1984, she clerked for Judge Sam Johnson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was in private solo practice in Austin, Texas, from 1984 until 1998.
Judge Johnson is board-certified as a specialist in criminal law and is licensed by the State of Texas, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Judge Johnson is currently a member of the State Bar of Texas and the College of the State Bar of Texas. She was formerly a member of the Texas Criminal Defense Attorneys Association and the Austin Criminal Defense Attorneys Association, where she served on the Board of Directors and as Treasurer from 1994 to 1997. She also served as Director of the Texas Association of Attorneys Board Certified in Criminal Law from 1996 to 1997. She has been actively involved in the community, serving on the Community Justice Council’s Committee on Offenders with Mental Impairments, as a volunteer attorney for Volunteer Legal Services of Central Texas, and as a volunteer for Literacy Austin.
Her current term on the Court ends December 31, 2016.
Jennifer Laurin
Professor, University of Texas School of Law
Jennifer Laurin joined the faculty of the University of Texas School of Law in 2009. Professor Laurin received her undergraduate degree in Politics from Earlham College. In 2003 she earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was an Executive Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review. She served as a law clerk to Judge Thomas Griesa of the Southern District of New York and Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and spent several years as a litigation associate with the New York City civil rights firm of Neufeld Scheck & Brustin, LLP (formerly Cochran Neufeld & Scheck, LLP).
Professor Laurin’s principal research interests lie in the intersections of criminal and constitutional litigation, and regulation of criminal justice institutions. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, Texas Law Review, and Notre Dame Law Review, among others. Professor Laurin is also a co-author (with Michael Avery, David Rudovsky, and Karen Blum) of Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation, the leading treatise in that area of civil rights litigation. Among other professional activities, Professor Laurin is currently serving as Reporter to the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Standards Task Force charged with updating the 1996 3rd Edition Discovery Standards.
Papers:
Tom McGarity
Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair in Administrative Law, University of Texas School of Law
Thomas O. McGarity holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair in Administrative Law at the University of Texas School of Law. He has taught Environmental Law, Administrative Law and Torts at UT Law school since 1980. Prior to that he taught at the University of Kansas School of Law.
After clerking for Judge William E. Doyle of the Federal Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver, Colorado, Professor McGarity served as an attorney-advisor in the Office of General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C.
Professor McGarity has written widely in the areas of Environmental Law and Administrative Law. His book Bending Science: How Special Interests Corrupt Public Health Research (co-authored with his University of Texas colleague Wendy Wagner) was published in May 2008 by Harvard University Press. The Yale University Press published The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Jurie in October 2008. His most recent book, also published by Yale University Press in 2013, is Freedom to Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez Faire Revival.
Professor McGarity is a past president and a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Progressive Reform, a nonprofit organization consisting of scholars who are committed to developing and sharing knowledge and information, with the ultimate aim of preserving the fundamental value of the life and health of human beings and the natural environment.
Papers:
Jennifer Mnookin
David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Jennifer Mnookin is the David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. She previously served as Vice Dean for Faculty and Research from 2007 to 2009, and Vice Dean for Faculty Recruitment and Intellectual Life in 2012-13. Professor Mnookin joined the UCLA Law faculty in 2005. Her previous academic appointments include Professor of Law and Barron F. Black Research Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, and Visiting Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School. She regularly teaches Evidence and Torts, as well as seminars in topics relating to expert evidence and law and popular culture.
Professor Mnookin researches and writes primarily in the area of evidence, particularly expert and scientific evidence, and the use of forensic science in court. She has written on a variety of evidence-related subjects, including, among others, Daubert and the appropriate standards for expert evidence; forms of forensic science including latent fingerprint examination and handwriting identification; DNA profiling; expert evidence and the Confrontation Clause; documentary films and legal evidence; and the history of expert evidence. Her most recent publications include, “The Need for a Research Culture in the Forensic Sciences,” (with co-authors) 58 UCLA Law Review 725 (2011); the Ira M. Belfer Lecture: “The Courts, The National Academy of Science, and the Future of Forensic Science,” 75 Brooklyn Law Review 1209 (2010); and “The Use of Technology in Human Expert Domains: Challenges and Risks Arising From the Use of Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems in Forensic Science,” (with Dror) 9(1) Law, Probability & Risk 47 (2010).
Professor Mnookin is also a co-author of The New Wigmore: A Treaty on Evidence: Expert Evidence (with Kaye, Bernstein and Friedman) (2nd ed. Aspen, 2011) (supplemented annually), and as of 2011, has joined Modern Scientific Evidence (with Faigman, et al.). Mnookin has spearheaded amicus briefs on behalf of a group of evidence professors in several recent Confrontation Clause cases before the Supreme Court, and is currently the primary investigator on a major grant from the NIJ to investigate the relationship between difficulty and error rate in latent fingerprint identification. She has served on a variety of working groups on issues surrounding forensic science and evidence law, including an NIJ/NIST expert working group on human factors in fingerprint identification; a National Academy of Sciences committee on Daubert and alternatives; and as an advisory member to an Office of Science & Technology’s interagency working group on research issues in forensic science. She occasionally serves as an expert witness on evidence-related issues. Mnookin is on the advisory board of several journals and is a member of the ALI.
Professor Mnookin received her A.B. from Harvard University, her J.D. from the Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in History and Social Study of Science and Technology from M.I.T.
Dr. Pasky Pascual
National Center for Environmental Research, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Pasky Pascual is a scientist and lawyer who specializes in the intersection between his two domains. He has authored and co-authored numerous publications on how courts evaluate scientific evidence. As the director for a government task force on computational models, he convened an interdisciplinary group of experts in statistics, science, law, and philosophy to produce a report on modeling published by the National Academy of Sciences. He was granted a science fellowship from the U.S. State Department to investigate the impact of climate change on coral reefs. He has taught modeling principles in the U.S., Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. His current research focuses on using Bayesian statistics to analyze “Big Data.” To introduce these ideas to the general public, he recently published an op-ed piece on a Bayesian model he developed that predicts the outcome of baseball games. In his spare time, Pasky likes to write historical fiction and published “Under a Tropical Sun,” a novel about the American colonization of the Philippines.
Papers:
Amanda Pustilnik
Associate Professor of Law, University of Maryland School of Law
Amanda C. Pustilnik is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law, where she teaches Criminal Law, Evidence, and Law & Neuroscience. Her current research includes work on models of mind in criminal law, evidentiary issues presented by neuroscientific work on memory, and the role of pain in different legal domains.
Prior to joining the University of Maryland, she was a Climenko fellow and lecturer on law at Harvard Law School. Before entering the legal academy, she practiced litigation with Covington & Burling and with Sullivan & Cromwell, where she focused on white collar criminal matters. Prof. Pustilnik also clerked for the Hon. Jose A. Cabranes on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
She graduated Yale Law School and Harvard College, and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, Emmanuel College, in the History and Philosophy of Science department.
Prof. Pustilnik has also worked at McKinsey & Company as a management consultant and is a member of the board of directors of the John Harvard Scholarships. During Spring 2015, Professor Pustilnik will be serving as a Senior Fellow in Law & Neuroscience of the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital. This Center is a collaboration between Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Law School.
John Robertson
Vinson and Elkins Chair, University of Texas School of Law
John A. Robertson holds the Vinson and Elkins Chair at The University of Texas School of Law at Austin. He has written and lectured widely on law and bioethical issues. He is the author of two books in bioethics The Rights of the Critically Ill (1983) and Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies (1994), and numerous articles on reproductive rights, genetics, organ transplantation, and human experimentation. He has served on or been a consultant to many national bioethics advisory bodies, and is currently Chair of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
Papers:
Dr. Andrew Rosenberg
Director of the Center for Science and Democracy, Union of Concerned Scientists
Andrew A. Rosenberg, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He has more than 25 years of experience in government service and academic and non-profit leadership. He is the author of scores of peer-reviewed studies and reports on fisheries and ocean management and has published on the intersection between science and policy making.
Dr. Rosenberg came to UCS from Conservation International, where he served for two years as the organization’s senior vice president for science and knowledge. Previously, he served as the northeast regional administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he negotiated recovery plans for New England and mid-Atlantic fishery resources, endangered species protections and habitat conservation programs. He later became deputy director of the service.
Dr. Rosenberg is also the convening lead author of the oceans chapter of the U.S. Climate Impacts Advisory Panel. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Ocean Studies Board and the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. He is a professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of New Hampshire, where he previously served as dean of the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture.
Dr. Rosenberg received his Ph.D. in biology from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada and previously studied oceanography at Oregon State University and fisheries biology at the University of Massachusetts.
Dr. Michael Ruse
Lucycle T. Werkmeister Professor and Director of HPS Program, Florida State University
Michael Ruse, FRSC, is a philosopher of science who specializes in the philosophy of biology and is well known for his work on the relationship between science and religion, the creation-evolution controversy and the demarcation problem within science. Ruse was born in England, attending Bootham School, York. He took his undergraduate degree at the University of Bristol (1962), his master’s degree at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario (1964), and Ph.D. at the University of Bristol (1970).
Ruse taught at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada for 35 years. Since his retirement from Guelph, he has taught at Florida State University and is the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy (2000–present). In 1986, he was elected as a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Canada and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Bergen, Norway (1990), McMaster University, Ontario, Canada (2003) and the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada (2007). In September 2014 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Science by University College London.
Ruse was a key witness for the plaintiff in the 1981 test case (McLean v. Arkansas) of the state law permitting the teaching of “creation science” in the Arkansas school system. The federal judge ruled that the state law was unconstitutional.
Ruse delivered some of the 2001 Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology at the University of Glasgow. His lectures on Evolutionary Naturalism, “A Darwinian Understanding of Epistemology” and “A Darwinian Understanding of Ethics,” are collected in The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding (ed. Anthony Sanford, T & T Clark, 2003). Ruse debates regularly with William A. Dembski, a proponent of intelligent design. Ruse takes the position that it is possible to reconcile the Christian faith with evolutionary theory. Ruse founded the journal Biology and Philosophy, of which he is now Emeritus Editor, and has published numerous books and articles. He cites the influence of his late colleague Ernan McMullin.
Dr. Bill Sage
James R. Dougherty Chair for Faculty Excellence, University of Texas School of Law
William M. Sage, MD, JD, an authority on health law and policy, is James R. Dougherty Chair for Faculty Excellence at the University of Texas at Austin. He was previously a professor of law at Columbia University, and has taught as a visiting professor at Yale, Harvard, and Duke. He served as UT Austin’s inaugural vice provost for health affairs from 2006-2013, working closely with campus and UT system leadership in anticipation of the launch of the Dell Medical School.
Prof. Sage is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, is a fellow of the Hastings Center on bioethics, and serves on the editorial board of Health Affairs. He has taught law classes in regulation and public policy, health law, antitrust, and interdisciplinary classes in professional ethics and health policy. His expertise includes health care reform, antitrust, patient safety, health care quality, medical liability, insurance coverage, health information, and the regulation of professionals. He is interested in comparative health policy and global health, and holds a doctorate honoris causa from Université Paris Descartes.
His funded research focuses on medical error disclosure and patient safety with support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and on the role of antitrust law in health care reform with support from the Commonwealth Fund. He previously served as principal investigator for the Project on Medical Liability, a $3.5 million study of US medical malpractice policy funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and received an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is a co-editor of the first Oxford Handbook of American Health Law (forthcoming 2016). He has published over 150 articles or book chapters, and has co-authored or edited three books.
Prof. Sage received his A.B. with high honors from Harvard and his medical and law degrees with honors from Stanford. He completed internship at Mercy Hospital in San Diego, and served as a resident in anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins. Before entering teaching, he practiced corporate and securities law at O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles and, in 1993, headed four working groups of President Clinton’s Task Force on Health Care Reform.
Dr. Bob Truog
Professor of Medical Ethics, Anaesthesiology & Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School and Senior Associate in Critical Care Medicine, Children’s Hospital Boston
Robert Truog, MD, is Professor of Medical Ethics, Anaesthesiology & Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a Senior Associate in Critical Care Medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston. Dr. Truog received his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and is board certified in the practices of pediatrics, anesthesiology, and pediatric critical care medicine. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from Brown University and an honorary Master’s of Arts from Harvard University.
Dr. Truog practices pediatric critical care medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston, and served as Chief of the Division for ten years. His current major administrative roles include Director of Clinical Ethics in the Division of Medical Ethics and the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Institute for Professionalism and Ethical Practice at Children’s Hospital, and Chair of the Harvard Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee (ESCRO).
Dr. Truog has published more than 200 articles in bioethics and related disciplines, including recent national guidelines for providing end-of-life care in the Intensive Care Unit. He is Principle Investigator on an R0-1 grant from the NIH to improve end-of-life care in pediatric intensive care units. In his role as Director of the Institute for Professionalism and Ethical Practice, he conducts research and develops educational initiatives related to communication and relational skills.
He lectures widely nationally and internationally. His writings on the subject of brain death have been translated into several languages, and in 1997 he provided expert testimony on this subject to the German Parliament. Dr. Truog is an active member of numerous committees and advisory boards, and has received several awards over the years, including The Christopher Grenvik Memorial Award from the Society of Critical Care Medicine for his contributions and leadership in the area of ethics.
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Wendy Wagner
Joe A. Worsham Centennial Professor, University of Texas School of Law
Wendy Wagner is the Joe A. Worsham Centennial Professor at the University of Texas School of Law. She earned her law degree from Yale Law School, clerked for the Honorable Albert Engle of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and served as an honors attorney in the environmental enforcement section of the Department of Justice before joining academia in 1992. Wagner’s research focuses on the intersection of law and science, with particular attention to environmental policy, and she has authored two books and dozens of articles on the general topic of regulatory science. Wagner is also working on an empirical study of the administrative process, with support from the National Science Foundation. Outside of her academic duties, Wagner has served on several National Academies of Science committees, the Bipartisan Policy Center Committee on Regulatory Science, and as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the U.S. (ACUS) on a study of the agencies’ use of science. Wagner is a member scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform.
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