Health Law Faculty

FULL-TIME
Maxwell J. Mehlman
Director, The Law-Medicine Center; Arthur E. Petersilge Professor of Law; Professor of Bioethics, School of Medicine
B.A. (Reed College), B.A. (Oxford University), J.D. (Yale)
In between college and law school, Maxwell Mehlman was a Rhodes Scholar; after law school, he practiced with the Washington firm of Arnold & Porter before joining our faculty in 1984. Since 1986, he has been the director of the Law-Medicine Center. The National Institutes of Health recently awarded Prof. Mehlman a significant two-year grant to review, and then address, any public policy gaps in guidelines and ethical differences between therapeutic and enhancement genetic research that involves human subjects.

Sharona Hoffman, JD, LL.M.
Co-Director, The Law-Medicine Center; Professor of Law; Professor of Bioethics, School of Medicine
B.A. (Wellesley), J.D. (Harvard), LL.M. (University of Houston)
Sharona Hoffman joined the faculty in 1999 and teaches Civil Procedure, Employment Discrimination, Perspectives on Law and Biomedicine, and several seminars, including including Health Care & Human Rights; Health Matrix Notes Seminar; and Religion, Ethics, & the Law. Prior to obtaining her LL.M. in health law, Prof. Hoffman was a Senior Trial Attorney at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Houston, an associate at O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles and a judicial clerk for U.S. District Judge Douglas W. Hillman (Western District of Michigan). She is the law school’s first winner of the University’s Mather Spotlight Series Award for Women’s Scholarship.

Jessica Wilen Berg
Associate Director, The Law-Medicine Center; Professor of Law and Bioethics
B.A., J.D. (Cornell)
Jessica Wilen Berg joined the faculty in 1999 after serving as the Director of Academic Affairs of the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs and Section Director for Professionalism for the American Medical Association Institute for Ethics. Before that, she was a Scholar in Excellence at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a Fellow at both the Center for Biomedical Ethics and the Institute for Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia Medical School. Prof. Berg’s research and scholarship span a variety of areas including: public health, reproduction, research with human subjects, end-of-life issues, confidentiality, and e-medicine.

Laura B. Chisolm
Professor of Law and Director, Center for Social Justice
B.A. 1977, J.D. 1981 (Case Western Reserve)
After graduating at the head of her law class, Laura Chisolm spent three years with the Institute for Child Advocacy in Cleveland before returning to the School of Law as a member of the faculty. Her courses have included Property, Legislation, Nonprofit Organizations, and Wills, Trusts, and Future Interests. She has published articles on various aspects of political involvement by tax-exempt organizations, and she is now studying other legal issues affecting them. She is actively involved in the university’s Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations.

Paul Giannelli
Albert J. Weatherhead III and Richard W. Weatherhead Professor of Law
B.A. (Providence College), M.S.F.S. (George Washington), J.D., LL.M. (Virginia)
Paul Giannelli was a trial lawyer in the military before joining the law school in 1975. An expert on scientific evidence, he has lectured throughout the country and published many articles on evidence and criminal procedure.

Jessie Hill
Associate Professor and Associate Director, Center for Social Justice
B.A. 1992 (Brown University), J.D. 1999 (Harvard Law School)
Jessie Hill is Assistant Director of the newly formed Center for Social Justice. Shejoined the faculty in 2003 after practicing First Amendment and civil rights law as an Associate with the firm of Berkman, Gordon, Murray & DeVan in Cleveland. Before entering private practice, she worked at the Reproductive Freedom Project of the national ACLU office in New York, litigating challenges to state-law restrictions on reproductive rights. She also served as law clerk to the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Prof. Hill’s teaching focuses on constitutional law, federal constitutional litigation, and reproductive rights.

Wilbur C. Leatherberry
Professor and Director, Skills Courses & Advocacy Programs
A.B. 1965, J.D. 1968 (Case Western Reserve)
Before joining the faculty in 1973, Wilbur Leatherberry spent three years as a Legal Aid attorney and two years as a legislative assistant to Ohio Congressman Louis Stokes. He served as associate dean for academic affairs from 1992 to 2000. He teaches Contracts, Dispute Resolution, Insurance, Sales, and Secured Transactions. Prof. Leatherberry has been active in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution and helped to design the ADR program for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. He frequently serves as a neutral in mediation or arbitration processes, both private and court-annexed. In addition, he conducts ADR training programs both for neutrals and advocates.

Louise McKinney
Professor and Director, Health Law Clinic
B.A. (Heidelberg), J.D. (Case Western Reserve)
Louise McKinney has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach in the clinical law program at the University of Botswana Gaborone during the 2007-08 academic year. At the start of her law career, Prof. McKinney spent ten years with Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, most of them in its Law Reform Unit. During that time she was also a field instructor for Case Western Reserve University's School of Applied Social Sciences and an adjunct lecturer on the law faculty. She joined the School of Law faculty full time in 1989, after a year in Africa as director of clinical legal education at the University of Botswana. She was also on leave in 1998-99 as a Fulbright Scholar in Kenya.

Laura McNally
Associate Professor of Law
B.A. 1996 (William Smith), J.D. 1999 (Syracuse)
Laura McNally, who joined the faculty in 2005, teaches in the Civil Litigation Clinic and the Health Law Clinic. A former staff attorney with the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program, Prof. McNally was also a fellow and then Lecturer in Clinical Legal Education at the University of Alabama where she taught the Children's rights Clinic and the Disability Litigation Clinic. Ms. McNally spent the 2004-2005 academic year as a Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Suffolk University School of Law.

Dale A. Nance
Professor of Law
B.A. 1974 (Rice), J.D. 1977( Stanford), M.A. 1981 (Cal., Berkeley)
An internationally recognized evidence scholar, Dale Nance also teaches and writes about jurisprudence and legal theory. Before joining our faculty in 2002, Prof. Nance taught law at Chicago-Kent, where he was named a Norman and Edna Freehling Scholar and Associate Dean for Program Development. He has also taught at Northern Illinois University, and University of Colorado, the University of San Diego, and Cornell University. He is a reviser for the next edition of Wigmore on Evidence and is the author of numerous law review articles and the textbook, Law and Justice: Cases and Readings on the American Legal System (1994). He is a member of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy.

ADJUNCT FACULTY
Marleina T. Davis
Health Care Organizations and Finance
Cleveland Clinic Foundation

Robert A. Gerberry
Health Care Organizations and Finance
Akron City Hospital, Summa Health System

Franklin Hickman
Civil Law and Psychiatry, Criminal Law and Psychiatry
B.A., M.A. (Catholic), J.D. (Pennsylvania) Hickman & Lowder, Co., L.P.A.

Amy S. Leopard
Health Care Organizations and Finance
B.S. (Auburn University), MSHHA (University of Alabama, Birmingham), J.D. (Case)
Walter & Haverfield, LLP

Jeanine Arden Ornt
Health Care Organizations and Finance
B.A. (SUNY Cortland), J.D. (Albany Law School)
VP and General Counsel, Case Western Reserve University

Phillip J.Resnick
Civil Law and Psychiatry, Criminal Law and Psychiatry
B.A., M.D. (Case Western Reserve) Professor of Psychiatry, Case School of Medicine, Director of Forensic Psychiatric Services, University Hospitals of Cleveland