Robert L. Schwartz, a 30-year UNM School of Law faculty member, has been named the 2006 Distinguished Visiting Bioethicist by Southern Illinois University School of Law’s Center for Health Law and Policy. Schwartz will present a talk “The Rules of Engagement in the Bioethics Debate: Lessons from the Terry Schiavo Case” Thursday, March 30 at the SIU School of Law.
Photo: Robert L. Schwartz
Last spring, Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed after a protracted legal battle. Heated accusations from both sides captured the nation’s attention for months.
“The Schiavo case taught us as much about political discourse and legal argumentation as it taught us about end-of-life care,” Schwartz said. “We learned that there are areas that virtually no one wants to see regulated by Congress, and that courts – at federal and state levels – still can stand up to legislative overreaching, at least in the most extreme of cases. Eventual consensus on these issues will depend upon the creation of open minds in people who can listen respectfully to those with whom they disagree at a truly fundamental level.”
Shortly after joining UNM in 1976, Schwartz began to focus his research and teaching in the emerging field of health law.
Schwartz is a nationally recognized scholar in the area of bioethics and brings this expertise to his classes at both the law school and UNM School of Medicine.
He is one of five authors of "Health Law: Cases, Materials and Problems," the first textbook that treated health law as a subject when it was first published in 1987. Now in its fifth edition, it is the leading textbook of its kind in the country.
Contact: Laurie Mellas, (505) 277-5915; e-mail: lmellas@unm.edu