A Health Law Reader: An Interdisciplinary Approach

As the ties between health care and legal practice multiply, interest in these interrelated fields grows and courses in law and medicine and in health law, as well as specialized courses in bioethics, medical malpractice, and health care organization and finance, have proliferated. A Health Law Reader complements the casebooks that are used most often in general and specialized health law courses by providing in-depth and interdisciplinary treatment of the most important issues addressed in those texts. In addition, teachers who are dissatisfied with a traditional case law approach may wish to use the Reader as a primary text for courses that focus on legal and policy analysis rather than on traditional case law analysis. A Health Law Reader is also an excellent and up-to-date volume for anyone interested in the field.

Part I introduces students to the central normative disputes in bioethical theory and then examines particular problems that arise over the course of the life cycle. These problems arise in contexts that include assisted reproduction, abortion, genetic engineering, organ donation and physician-assisted suicide. In Part II of the Reader Robinson, Berry and McDonnell devote one chapter to comparative, political, and sociological perspectives on the American health care delivery system and one chapter to the history and theory of health care delivery in American. The last two chapters of the book address health care access, cost, and quality issues, with emphasis on the most hotly contested issues in current health care delivery and medical malpractice reform debates.

"A 'best of' collection of a more focused nature, A Health Law Reader represents decades of work of the health care scholars who have contributed to our understanding and attempts to resolve many of the most difficult bioethical, policy, and legal issues confronting modern medicine and contemporary health care delivery."
- The Journal of Legal Medicine

John Robinson is an Associate Professor of Law at University of Notre Dame Law School.

Roberta Berry is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Director of the Law, Science & Technology Program at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Kevin McDonnell is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and the Edna and George McMahon Aquinas Chair in Philosophy Emeritus at Saint Mary's College.