Dean and Marjorie Cook Professor of Law,
University of Maryland School of Law

A member of the University of Maryland School of Law faculty since 1983, Karen Rothenberg was named Marjorie Cook Professor of Law in 1994 and dean in 2000. She was also the founding director of the school’s Law and Health Care Program from 1987 to 1999. During the 1995-96 academic year, she was on leave as special assistant to the director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health, National Institutes of Health. Rothenberg previously practiced law with the Washington, D.C. firm of Covington and Burling, and has worked with a variety of health and medical organizations.

She served as president of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics; as a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Legal and Ethical Issues Relating to the Inclusion of Women in Clinical Studies; and on a number of NIH panels on prenatal care, the recruitment and retention of women in clinical studies and the ethical, legal and social implications of genetics.

She has also served as co-editor-in-chief of the "Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics," as a member of the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, and the National Action Plan for Breast Cancer. Rothenberg is currently serving on the American Bar Association’s Coordinating Group on Bioethics and the Law and on the Advisory Council to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Rothenberg has written numerous articles on AIDS, women’s health, genetics, the right to forego treatment, emergency care and new reproductive technologies. She has co-edited a book entitled, "Women and Prenatal Testing: Facing the Challenges of Genetic Technology," and recently completed a series of studies on legislative approaches to genetic information in both the health insurance and workplace contexts that were published in "Science."

Rothenberg is the 1996 recipient of the Joseph Healey Health Law Teachers Award, presented by the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics. She received both her B.A., magna cum laude, and her M.P.A. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and graduated Order of the Coif from the University of Virginia School of Law.

« Return to Advisory Board