Health Law/Medicine/Bioethics: Selected Sources   Tags: bioethics, health law, law and medicine  

This guide provides selected books and online resources for locating background and scholarly materials, studies and reports, legislative, regulatory and policy developments, and statistical information in the areas of Health Law, Medicine, and Bioethics.  The focus is on sources particularly relevant to law students in courses on health law, health-related public policy and regulation, reproductive technology, and biotechnology and related industries.  It should also be useful for students investigating other topics at the intersection of law and medicine.  Links are provided for access to database resources for members of the Hofstra Law community and to Hofstra University (Axinn) resources.  The guide also includes direct links to many free internet sites.

When seeking information for classes or research papers in health and medicine-related fields, law students and legal researchers are not primarily focused on purely scientific studies in biology, biotechnology, and clinical treatment, although some resources included in this guide are excellent sources for these.  Instead, researching issues in health law, bioethics, biotechnology and pharmaceutical regulation, reproductive technology, or health care reform and policy typically requires the use of resources that are either topically focused or specialized, or provide access to interdisciplinary studies across disciplines such as economics, psychology, medicine, sociology, philosophy and political science.    

This guide includes some of the most useful resources for legal research in health law-related fields:

• Treatises, texts, and reference works providing background, expert treatment and factual information for health law research;
• Journal databases and portals providing access to articles and working papers;
• Web resources of U.S. federal and state health agencies;
• Current awareness resources providing information on the most recent developments in health care law and policy: case law, pending and enacted federal and state legislation, litigation, and industry developments;
• Sources of legislative history and analysis of health care-related legislation;
• Sources of policy studies and reports from academic centers, nonprofit institutes, think tanks and health advocacy groups; and
• Information, standards, and publications from medical and legal professional associations and industry organizations.

The guide is selective, with the focus on some of the most useful sources for American law and policy, although databases and web sites providing articles and information for foreign, global, and comparative health law research are included.  For assistance using the resources in this guide or locating other sources, please contact the Reference Desk.