Inaugural Chair in Health Law appointed

Professor King, who is currently at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, is an expert in healthcare reform, specialising in some of the most complex challenges facing the US healthcare system. She was unanimously selected following a rigorous recruitment process.

The establishment of an endowed Chair in Health Law is due to the generosity of Dr John Mayo, one of the University of Auckland’s long-standing donors, who has funded the position.

Professor King, who will take up the role on 1 July, is the Associate Dean and Co-Director of the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science, and Health Policy, the Bion M. Gregory Chair of Business Law and Professor of Law. In addition, she is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCSF/UC Hastings Master’s Program in Health Policy and Law, and the Director of the J.D. Concentration on Law and Health Sciences.

Her research has focused on the drivers of healthcare costs, with a special interest in market consolidation and efforts to improve transparency in healthcare pricing. Her past scholarship has also addressed questions of individual autonomy and the states’ police power, including medical decision-making and constitutional and regulatory questions regarding reproductive genetic testing.

With an impressive research record including co-authorship of the 8th edition casebook of Health Law Cases and Problems, Professor King has also testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittees on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law and Oversight and Investigation as well as the state legislatures in California and Washington and served on a technical expert panel on price transparency hosted by RAND and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Professor King’s work has been published in Nature, Health Affairs, and numerous prestigious law journals, and her work has been referenced in the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, and Slate Magazine. Professor King currently is the President of the Board of the American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics.

Prior to joining the faculty at UC Hastings, Professor King served as a Fellow at the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford Law School (2006-2008) and the American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics (2005-2006); and in 2012, was named the John “Jack” Wennberg Fellow for the Informed Medical Decisions Foundation.