Valid ID and RSVP required. RSVP here or email Anam Salem. Lunch will be provided.
This talk examines the implications of the increasing judicialization of the right to medicines for our conception of human rights. In countries such as Brazil, tens of thousands of people a year now sue – almost all successfully — for access to specific medicines. I will situate the rise of this new human right in theoretical debates about the implications of human rights, and argue that, if it is unconnected to an account of the political economy of medicines, the way we think about this new right takes a troubling neoliberal form. I also propose an alternative path, through which the right to medicines could more fundamentally challenge the current global order, in which many must go without the medicines they need and in which medicines for the poor are typically not developed.
About the Speaker
Amy Kapczynski is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School and faculty director of the Global Health Justice Partnership. She joined the Yale Law faculty in January 2012. Her areas of research including information policy, intellectual property law, international law, and global health. Prior to coming to Yale, she taught at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She also served as a law clerk to Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen G. Breyer at the U.S. Supreme Court, and to Judge Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She received her A.B. from Princeton University, M. Phil. from Cambridge University, M.A. from Queen Mary and Westfield College at University of London, and J.D. from Yale Law School.
