Glucksberg and Quill at Ten:
Death, Dying, and the Constitution

The University of Michigan Law School
Hutchins Hall, Room 100
November 8, 2007
1:30 – 5:00pm

Introduction | Speaker Biographies | Abstracts
Agenda/Webcasts

Speaker Biographies

• Randy E. Barnett
  Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory
  Georgetown University Law Center

  A graduate of Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, Prof. Barnett has written extensively in the fields of constitutional Law, contract Law, criminal justice, cyberlaw, and jurisprudence. Prof. Barnett's publications include over eighty articles and reviews, in addition to seven monographs, including Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, which won the 2004 Lysander Spooner Book Award for the best book on liberty. Prof. Barnett argued the 2004 medical marijuana case of Gonzales v. Raich before the U.S. Supreme Court, and again in 2006 on remand before the Ninth Circuit. Prof. Barnett began his legal career as a prosecutor in the Cook County States' Attorney's Office in Chicago.

• Erwin Chimerinsky
  Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory
  Georgetown University Law Center

  After graduating from Northwestern University and Harvard Law School, Prof. Chemerinsky worked as a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and the firm of Dobrovir, Oakes & Gebhardt in Washington, D.C. As a professor at DePaul College of Law, the University of Southern California Law School, and Duke Law School starting in 2004, he has amassed a substantial body of work including over 100 law review articles, two major treatises, a casebook on constitutional law, and the book Interpreting the Constitution. Prof. Chemerinsky has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals. As of July 2008, Prof. Chemerinsky will become founding Dean of the Donald Bren School of Law at the University of California, Irvine.

• Herbert Hendin
  President and Medical Director, Suicide Prevention International
  Professor of Psychiatry, New York Medical College

  Dr. Hendin's research has focused on the clinical and psychosocial aspects of psychiatric problems, most notably suicide, posttraumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, and assisted suicide and euthanasia. He has done studies of assisted suicide in both Oregon and the Netherlands. He has won numerous awards for his research, including the prestigious Louis I. Dublin Award of the American Association of Suicidology. The U.S. Supreme Court cited his work in its opinion in Washington v. Glucksberg. He is the author of many professional articles and two books on assisted suicide: Seduced by Death: Doctors, Patients, and Assisted Suicide and coauthor with Dr. Kathleen Foley of The Case against Assisted Suicide: For the Right to End-of-Life Care.

• Yale Kamisar (Symposium Chair)
  Clarence Darrow Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Law, University of Michigan Law School
  Distinguished Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law

  In addition to many publications on constitutional law, constitutional-criminal procedure and the “the politics of crime,” Prof. Kamisar has written extensively on physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. His first article on “mercy-killing” (as it was then called) was published 49 years ago. Many of Kamisar's writings have been quoted or cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, including several in Washington v. Glucksberg.

• Joan L. Larsen
  Adjunct Professor of Law and Counsel to the Associate Dean for Student and Graduate Activities, University of Michigan Law School

  After earning her J.D., magna cum laude , at Northwestern University School of Law, Prof. Larsen clerked for Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. Before coming to Michigan in 1998, she served in the litigation section at Sidley & Austin's Washington, D.C. office and then as a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern. From 2002-03, Prof. Larsen served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, where she provided advice to the White House, the Attorney General, and government agencies. Professor Larsen's research and teaching interests include constitutional law, criminal procedure, and comparative constitutionalism.

• Donald H. Regan
  W illiam W. Bishop Jr. Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

  Prof. Regan teaches and writes on international trade law, moral and political philosophy, and constitutional law. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1998, and his book, Utilitarianism and Co-operation, shared the Franklin J. Matchette Prize of the American Philosophical Association for 1979-80. Prof. Regan is a graduate of Harvard and the University of Virginia Law School. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned a degree in economics, and he has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan, where he is also a professor of philosophy. He joined the Michigan faculty in 1968 and has visited at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Virginia, and the University of Zagreb.

• Steven D. Smith
  Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law

  An expert in the field of law and religion, Prof. Smith graduated from Brigham Young University and Yale Law School. Prof. Smith taught at the University of Colorado Law School and the University of Notre Dame Law School before joining the faculty at San Diego. Prof. Smith's books include The Constitution and the Pride of Reason, Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom, and Law's Quandary. Prof. Smith currently teaches in the areas of constitutional law and law and religion.

• Marc Spindelman
  Visiting Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
  Associate Professor of Law, Michael E. Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University

  A graduate of John Hopkins University and the University of Michigan Law School, Prof. Spindelman is a visiting professor at Michigan for the 2007-08 academic year. His recent writings have included an exploration of problems of inequality in constitutional law and bioethics. Prof. Spindelman teaches courses on these topics in addition to courses in family law, health law, and sexuality and the law. Prior to joining the faculty at the Moritz College of Law, Prof. Spindelman was a Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Health Policy at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University, and he has held positions at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Harvard Law School.

• Cass Sunstein (by video conference)
  Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Chicago Law School

  After graduating from Harvard College and from Harvard Law School magna cum laude, Prof. Sunstein clerked for Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to joining the University of Chicago Law School Faculty, Prof. Sunstein was an attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice. A prolific scholar, he has published many books and articles on constitutional law, regulatory law, and political theory. Professor Sunstein has also testified before Congress on many topics and involved himself in various constitution-making and law reform activities abroad.

• Kathryn Tucker
  Director of Legal Affairs, Compassion and Choices
  Adjunct Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark School of Law

  A graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, Prof. Tucker practiced at the Seattle-based firm of Perkins Coie before moving to Compassion & Choices, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and expanding the rights of the terminally ill and improving end-of-life care. Prof. Tucker argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the plaintiffs in Washington v. Glucksberg, supporting a constitutional right for competent patients to choose a humane, physician-assisted hastened death. Prof. Tucker has also litigated cases of a similar nature at the state constitutional level, and has successfully defended the Oregon Death With Dignity Act from attack by former U.S. Attorneys General Ashcroft and Gonzales. She has published many journal articles on law, medicine and ethics at the end of life.