KATHARINE VAN TASSEL

Professor of Law

kvantassel@wsulaw.edu

DEGREES

J.D., Case Western Reserve University School of Law
M.P.H., Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
B.S.N., Case Western Reserve University School of Law

COURSES

Evidence

BIOGRAPHY

Katharine Van Tassel is a Professor of Law at Western State College of Law. Previously, she served as Dean and Professor of Law at San Francisco Law School, the oldest law school in San Francisco. She has served as the Associate Dean of Academics and Professor of Law at Concordia University School of Law, the founding Director of Health Law Programs and Professor of Law at Creighton University School of Law, the founding Director of the University of Akron’s Public Health Law & Science Center, as well as the founding Director of Akron Law’s Health Law Programs and Professor of Law. At Akron Law, she was the recipient of the 2013 Faculty Scholar of the Year award.

Professor Van Tassel’s co-authored book, Food and Drug Administration has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and by numerous federal district courts and courts of appeals, her research has been cited by judges on the supreme courts of New Mexico and Nevada on issues of first impression, and she has testified as an expert witness at hearings held by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., as well as at hearings held before the Ohio Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Professor Van Tassel’s scholarship has appeared in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, the University of Chicago Legal Forum, the Pepperdine Law Review, the Cardozo Law Review, the Connecticut Law Review, the Brooklyn Law Review, the University of Cincinnati Law Review, and the Seton Hall Law Review. She is also the co-author on the book, Litigating the Nursing Home Case and is the author of the book, International Encyclopaedia of Laws: Medical Law, United States of America (Wolters Kluwer - Kluwer Law International, 2022), part of a series of books written by an international group of experts who provide comparative information on the national laws of 32 countries in 25 separate subject areas since 1977.

She is the Co-Chair of the Food & Drug Law Committee of the Administrative Law Section of the American Bar Association and has served on the executive boards of the Law, Medicine, and Healthcare Section, the Law and Mental Disability Section, and the BioLaw Section of the American Association of Law Schools. She is the Editor of HealthLawProf Blog, has served as a blogger on Bill of Health, a blog of the Petrie-Flom Center at the Harvard School of Law, and as a blogger on BioLaw: Law and the Life Sciences.

Professor Van Tassel has served as a Hearing Officer for medical staff peer review proceedings and is a consultant on matters involving the abuse and neglect of nursing home residents. She has served as a member of both the clinical ethics review team and the institutional review board for experimental drugs and devices of the largest hospital system in Western Massachusetts.

At the start of her career, Professor Van Tassel clerked for U.S. District Court Judge William K. Thomas before becoming an associate with the international law firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey (now Squire, Patton, Boggs). She has regularly taught Health Law: Quality, Cost and Access, Healthcare Organization & Finance, Governance, Compliance & Risk Management, Compliance Skills: Planning, Auditing, Investigating, and Reporting, Bioethics, Public Health Law, Food, Drug & Biotech Law, Eldercare Law, Torts, Evidence, Civil Procedure and Sales.

BOOKS

• Van Tassel, K, INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF LAWS: MEDICAL LAW, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Wolters Kluwer - Kluwer Law International, forthcoming 2022) (part of a series of books written by an international group of experts who provide comparative information on the national laws of 32 countries in 25 separate subject areas since 1977).
• O’Reilly, J. T., Van Tassel, K., FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION (4th ed., 2014) (Thomson Reuters) (three-volume treatise which is cited as an authoritative FDA source by the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal circuit and district courts) (bi-annual supplements, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).
• O’Reilly, J. T., Van Tassel, K., LITIGATING THE NURSING HOME CASE (2d ed. 2014) (ABA Press).

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Van Tassel, K., Vulnerable Populations and Vaccine Injury Compensation: The Need for Legal Reform, in COVID-19 AND THE LAW: DISRUPTION, IMPACT, AND LEGACY (I. Glenn Cohen et al., eds., Cambridge University Press 2022) (this book is a publication of a joint project of The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School) (with Sharona Hoffman).
• Van Tassel, K, Covid-19 Vaccine Injuries — Preventing Inequities in Compensation, 384 NEW ENG. J. MED. e34 (January, 2021) (lead author, with Carmel Shachar, Harvard Law, and Sharona Hoffman, Case Western Law).
• Van Tassel, K., et al., Food and Drug Law, in DEVELOPMENTS IN ADMINISTRATIVE LAW & REGULATORY PRACTICE 2016, 344-381 (Michael Tien ed., 2017).
• Van Tassel, K., Modernizing the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act to Harmonize with the Affordable Care Act to Improve Equality, Quality, and Cost of Emergency Care, 15 HOUS. J. L. & HEALTH POL'Y 133-39 (2015) (invited article for the University of Houston Law Center's 2014 Symposium, America's Future Health Care System: Implications for Health Law, Policy, and Ethics).
• Van Tassel, K, Intellectual Property and Public Health—A White Paper, 7 Akron J. Intell. Prop. 1 (2014) (workshop paper with Ryan Vacca, James Ming Chen, Jay Dratler, Thomas Folsom, Timothy S. Hall, Yaniv Heled, Frank A. Pasquale, Elizabeth Reilly, Jeffrey Samuels, Katherine Strandburg, Kara W. Swanson and Andrew W. Torrance).
• Van Tassel, K., Regulating in Uncertainty: Animating the Public Health Product Safety Net to Capture Consumer Products Regulated by the FDA that Use Innovative Technologies, Including Nanotechnologies, Genetic Modification, Cloning, and Lab Grown Meat, 2013 U. CHI. LEGAL F. 101-156 (2013) (invited article for the University of Chicago Legal Forum’s 2013 Symposium Frontiers of Consumer Protection).
• Van Tassel, K., Using Clinical Practice Guidelines and Knowledge Translation Theory to Cure the Negative Impact of the Hospital Peer Review Hearing System on Health Care Quality, Cost, and Access, 40 PEPPERDINE L. REV. 911-975 (2013).
• Van Tassel, K., Harmonizing the Affordable Care Act with the Three Main National Systems for Healthcare Quality Improvement: The Tort, Licensure, and Hospital Peer Review Systems, 78 BROOK. L. REV. 1-41 (2013).
• Van Tassel, K., Blacklisted: The Constitutionality of the Federal System for Publishing Reports of 'Bad Doctors' in the National Practitioner Data Bank, 33 CARDOZO L. REV. 101-65 (2012).
• Van Tassel, K, Goldman, R., The Growing Consumer Exposure to Nanotechnology in Everyday Products: Regulating Innovative Technologies in Light of Lessons from the Past, 44 CONN. L. REV. 481-530 (2012).

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

• Virtual Joint Symposium, COVID-19 AND THE LAW: DISRUPTION, IMPACT, AND LEGACY, The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School (February, 2021).
• Mandatory School Vaccinations – Can and Should These Be Enforced?, Annual Health Care Institute and Medical-Legal Summit, Academy of Medicine of Cleveland & Northern Ohio, Academy of Medicine Education Foundation, and Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association (April, 2021).
• COVID Pandemic: Social and Legal Implications, President’s Annual Alumni Event, Case Western Reserve University (upcoming Naples, Florida, February, 2021).
• Are Nanoparticles the New Asbestos? Environmental Health and the Law Symposium, Case Western Reserve University School of Law (March, 2020).
• Are Nanoparticles the New Asbestos?, Zaremski Lecture Series, Law-Medicine Center, Case Western Reserve University School of Law (March, 2020).
• Are Nanoparticles the New Asbestos?, Public Affairs Discussion Group, Case Western Reserve University (February, 2020).
• Successful Aging, President’s Annual Alumni Event, Case Western Reserve University (Naples, Florida, January, 2020).
• The Growing Consumer Exposure to Nanotechnology in Everyday Products: Regulating Innovative Technologies in Light of Lessons from the Past by Creating a “Public Health Product Safety Net,” The City Club of Cleveland (September, 2019).
• Top Ten Issues Facing the FDA in 2018, Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, 2017 Administrative Law Conference (Washington, D.C., 2017).