Preeminent public health law scholar Lawrence Gostin had a fireside chat with Dean Cathy Bradley last week, touching on health, human rights, the role of law, and the future of the field of public health. Gostin is a Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown University, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and is the Founding O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law.
More than 60 students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, and local public health experts joined the fireside chat.
Gostin spoke about public health as a human right, a subject upon which he is an expert, given his background working with former Senators Bob Dole and Edward Kennedy to develop the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and prior to that, he spent 15 years working in mental health policy and law in the United Kingdom. The time spent working in mental health and ensuring patients’ health care rights had a profound and lasting impact on Gostin.
“We are all born equal in dignity with the right to health services,” Gostin said.
For the many students in the audience, he had words of encouragement and hope:
“I believe the future is yours, not mine. You’re going to make America and the world better. Make the world a little better, a little healthier, a little more just,” he said. `
He also had a message of action: “Believe in science, stand up for science, it’s the right thing to do,” Gostin said.
Washingtonian Magazine lists Gostin as the most influential 500 people shaping policy in America. A systematic empirical analysis of legal scholarship, independent researchers ranked him first in the nation in productivity among all law professors. In 2023, he was ranked fourth in the world among law professors. He is consistently ranked first in the nation in citations for health law. Gostin is also ranked first among health law professors on Google Scholar and on West Law.
