Faculty and Administration Profiles

Nadia N. Sawicki

About

Prof. Sawicki, who joined the Loyola faculty in 2009, considers the hallmark of a good life to be an openness to ideas and conversations in pursuit of truth. Her areas of expertise, health law and bioethics, provide no shortage of opportunity for such conversations. Prof. Sawicki’s research interests include the accommodation of personal and professional beliefs in a pluralistic society; the appropriate use of persuasion by state actors; the law’s recognition of legal rights to recovery for invasion of contested harms; definitions of professional roles and ethical norms in medicine; and the state’s role in enforcing those norms. She approaches these problems from the disciplines of both law and ethical theory.

Her articles have been published in a variety of law reviews and peer reviewed journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Maryland Law Review, Cardozo Law Review, Yale Law and Policy Review, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Journal of Health Care Law and Policy, Virtual Mentor: The American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, and the American Journal of Bioethics.

Prior to joining Loyola, Prof. Sawicki held the inaugural George Sharswood Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she taught bioethics and public health law. Prior to that, she served as a lecturer in History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts and Sciences, practiced law with Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen, and clerked for the Honorable J. Curtis Joyner of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 

Degrees

BA magna cum laude, Brown University
M. Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
JD cum laude, University of Pennsylvania Law School

Program Areas

Torts
Introduction to Health Law
Constitutional Issues in Health Law
Bioethics, Law & Policy

Selected Publications

Professor Nadia Sawicki's SSRN Webpage

Informed Consent and Societal Stewardship, Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics (forthcoming 2017)

Who Judges Harm? 27 Journal of Clinical Ethics (forthcoming 2016)

Informed Refusal in the Rehabilitation Context: Legal Considerations, 8 PM&R: The Journal of Injury, Function, and Rehabilitation 691 (2016) 

Modernizing Informed Consent: Expanding the Boundaries of Materiality, 2016 University of Illinois Law Review 821 (2016)

Mandating Disclosure of Religious Limitations on Medical Practice, 42 American Journal of Law & Medicine 85 (2016)

Informed Consent as Compelled Professional Speech: Fictions, Facts, and Open Questions, 48 Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 11 (2016)

Ethical Limitations on the State’s Use of Arational Persuasion, 38 Law & Policy 211 (2016)

Complaints to Professional and Regulatory Bodies, in Bill Sage, Glenn Cohen, and Allison Hoffman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of American Health Law (forthcoming)

Clinicians’ Involvement in Capital Punishment – Constitutional Implications, 371 New England Journal of Medicine 103 (2014)

Compelling Images: The Constitutionality of Emotionally Persuasive Health Campaigns, 73 Maryland L. Rev. 458 (2014).

A New Life for Wrongful Living, 58 New York L. Sch. L. Rev. 279 (2014).

Patient Protection and Decision Aid Quality, 54 Arizona L. Rev. 621 (2012).

The Hollow Promise of Freedom of Conscience, 33 Cardozo L. Rev. 1389 (2012).

Informed Consent Beyond the Physician-Patient Encounter: Tort Law Implications of Extra-Clinical Decision Support Tools, 20 Annals of Health Law 1 (2012).

The Abortion Informed Consent Debate: More Light, Less Heat, 21 Cornell J. of L. and Pub. Pol’y 1 (2011).

Judging Physicians: The Person and the Professional, 13 Virtual Mentor: Am. Med. Ass’n J. of Ethics 718 (2011).

Book Review: Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition, 18 Ethical Perspectives 702 (2011).

Character, Competence, and the Principles of Medical Discipline, 13 J. Health Care L. & Pol'y 285 (2010).

There Must Be A Means: The Backwards Jurisprudence of Baze v. Rees, 12 U. Penn. J. Constit. L. 1407 (2010).

Doctors, Discipline, and the Death Penalty: Professional Implications of Safe Harbor Policies, 27 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 107 (2008).

Without Consent: Moral Imperatives, Special Abilities, and the Duty to Treat, 8:8 Am. J. Bioethics 33 (2008).

Holly Fernandez Lynch, Michele Mathes, and Nadia N. Sawicki, Compliance with Advance Directives: Wrongful Living and Tort Law Incentives, 29:2 J. Legal Med. 133 (2008).

Joanna Bergmann, Arthur Caplan, and Nadia Sawicki, Conceiving the Father: An Ethicist's Approach to Paternity Disestablishment, White Paper, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Emerging Issues in Paternity Establishment Expert Symposium (Jan. 2006).

Wrongful Pregnancy, Wrongful Life and Wrongful Birth, 51:3 Med. Trial Technique Quarterly 283 (2005).