The Law of American Health Care, Second Edition

Kevin Outterson

Kevin Outterson teaches health law and corporate law as the Austin B Fletcher Professor of Law at Boston University, where he co-directs the Health Law Program, currently ranked #2 in the country by US News and World Report. He is the executive director of Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X), a global partnership hosted at BU Law that is focused on supporting developers of promising new antibiotics, diagnostics, and vaccines that tackle the threat of untreatable bacterial infections. He serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics; faculty co-advisor to the American Journal of Law & Medicine; past chair of the Section on Law, Medicine & Health Care of the AALS; and a member of the Board of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics. Professor Outterson was recently named to the Advisory Panel for the Longitude Prize, which awards £10 million to address antibiotic resistance. Before teaching, Outterson was a partner at two major US law firms.

His research focuses on the organization and finance of the health sector. Areas of specialization include global pharmaceutical markets, particularly antibiotics and other antimicrobials that can degrade in usefulness over time through resistance. He received a grant from the European Union’s Innovative Medicines Initiative to study business models and incentives for antibiotic development, and he leads an interdisciplinary project on the legal ecology of antimicrobial resistance, funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program on public health law. He is an associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, London, where he works on global solutions to antibiotic resistance, and an appointed member of the Antimicrobial Resistance Working Group at the Centers for Disease Control.

Professor Outterson has testified before President Obama’s Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic Resistance, where he presented the results of a two-year study sponsored by the European Union on designing economic incentives for antibiotic development.

Nicole Huberfeld

Nicole Huberfeld is Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law at BU School of Public Health and Professor of Law at BU School of Law, where she is also affiliate faculty with the Center for Antiracism Research and the Medicaid Policy Lab. Her research studies the intersection of health law and constitutional law, with particular focus on federalism, Medicaid, health reform, reproductive rights, and law as a determinant of health. She is co-author of two leading health law casebooks: The Law of American Health Care, with Elizabeth Weeks (University of Georgia School of Law), Kevin Outterson (Executive Director of CARB-X & N. Neal Pike Scholar in Health and Disability Law at BU Law), and Matt Lawrence (Associate Professor of Law at Emory School of Law) (3d edition forthcoming in 2023). She also is coauthor of Public Health Law, 3d Ed. (with Mariner, Annas & Ulrich, 2019). She has authored many book chapters, law journal articles, peer-reviewed articles, and commentaries, appearing in publications such as Stanford Law Review, Harvard Law & Policy Review, Boston College Law Review, Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics, University of Chicago Law Review, Boston University Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Health Affairs, New England Journal of Medicine, and JAMA. Her work has been cited in judicial opinions by the U.S. Supreme Court, lower federal courts, state courts, and federal and state executive agencies. In 2022, she became the Research Director for the Joint Editorial Board on Health Law for the Uniform Law Commission.

She has been interviewed by media such as The Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, Congressional Quarterly, Huffington Post, National Law Journal, Mother Jones, Law 360, Politico, Vice News, Newsweek, Time, The Sunday Times, and Modern Healthcare.

In 2019, Huberfeld won the Excellence in Teaching Award for teaching in the Core at BU School of Public Health. In 2021, she was nominated for the Melton Teaching Award at BU Law, and in 2022 she was nominated for the Petit Teaching Award at BU Law.

Prior to joining the BU faculty, Huberfeld taught courses on constitutional law, health care organizations and finance, bioethical issues in the law, and health law and policy at the University of Kentucky College of Law and was a Bioethics Associate at the College of Medicine. Huberfeld won the College of Law Duncan Teaching Award in 2008. Previously, she taught at Seton Hall University School of Law as well as created and directed the health care compliance certification program at SHU Law. She also practiced health law in New York and New Jersey before entering academia.

Elizabeth Weeks

Elizabeth Weeks joined the University of Georgia School of Law faculty in 2011. She presently serves as the university's associate provost for faculty affairs and holds the Charles H. Kirbo Chair in Law. Her teaching and research interests include torts, health law, health care financing and regulation, and public health law. From 2018 to 2020, she served as the law school's associate dean for faculty development. Additionally, she was awarded an SEC Academic Leadership Development Program Fellowship for 2021-22.

Prior to coming to UGA, Weeks served on the faculty at the University of Kansas School of Law. During her time there, she was honored with the Howard M. and Susan Immel Award for Teaching Excellence and with the Meredith Docking Faculty Scholar Award, a university-wide honor for faculty who have distinguished themselves early in their careers. Additionally, she served as a visiting professor at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law and the UGA School of Law.

Her scholarship includes the book Healthism: Health Status Discrimination and the Law (with J. Roberts) (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and a health law casebook The Law of American Health Care (with N. Huberfield and K. Outterson), now in its second edition. She has also published numerous articles, including pieces in the Boston University Law Review, the Hofstra Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Washington University Law Review, the Georgia Law Review and the North Carolina Law Review. She was recognized as one of four emerging health law scholars nationwide by the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics with its Health Law Scholars Award in 2005. Weeks has also served as chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Law, Medicine, and Health Care, and she currently serves as co-editor of the Health Law Section of the online journal Jotwell.

Before entering academe, Weeks worked as an associate in the Health Industry Group at Vinson & Elkins in Houston. She also served as a judicial clerk for Judge Jacques L. Wiener Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and for Chief Justice Thomas R. Phillips of the Supreme Court of Texas.

Weeks earned her bachelor's degree from Columbia University and her law degree summa cum laude from UGA, where she was on the Jessup Moot Court Team, was editor-in-chief of the Georgia Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. Before returning to her hometown of Athens for law school, Weeks was a psychiatric social worker in Chicago.