Thaddeus Pope is an Associate Professor of Law and a member of the Health Law Institute at Widener University School of Law. Professor Pope received a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1992, a J.D. from Georgetown University in 1997, and a Ph.D. (in Philosophy) from Georgetown University in 2003. Following graduation from law school, Professor Pope clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He then worked as a litigation attorney with Arnold & Porter LLP in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2005, and as an Assistant Professor of Law with the University of Memphis from 2005 to 2007. Professor Pope teaches and writes in the areas of Health Law, Bioethics, Public Health, and Torts.
1. Health Law and Bioethics
Resolving Conflicts with Surrogate Decision Makers, Chest (2010)
Restricting CPR to Patients Who Provide Informed Consent Will Not Permit Physicians to Unilaterally Refuse Requested CPR, The American Journal of Bioethics (2010)
Surrogate Selection: An Increasingly Viable, but Limited, Solution to Intractable Futility Disputes, Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy -- Forthcoming (2010)
A Conversation About End-of-Life Decisionmaking (with Alicia Ouellette, Timothy Quill, Robert Swidler, and Nancy Dubler), NYSBA Health Law Journal (2009)
Unilateral Refusal of Treatment and Patient Abandonment: Betancourt v. Trinitas Hospital, Brief of Amicus Curiae, Law Professor Thaddeus Mason Pope (2009)
Betancourt v. Tinitas Hospital is now pending before the Appellate Division of the New Jersey...
2. Public Health Law
Is Public Health Paternalism Really Never Justified? A Response to Joel Feinberg, Oklahoma City University Law Review (2005)
In the preeminent scholarly legal treatise on paternalism, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law:...
Bartender Wrong to Refuse Service, Las Vegas Sun (2000)
Balancing Public Health Against Individual Liberty: The Ethics of Smoking Regulations, University of Pittsburgh Law Review (2000)
Ten years ago, philosopher Robert E. Goodin published "No Smoking: The Ethical Issues." Goodin argued...
It’s Not About Smokers’ Choices, Washington Post (1999)
3. Torts
Involuntary Passive Euthanasia in U.S. Courts: Reassessing the Judicial Treatment of Medical Futility Cases, Marquette Elder's Advisor (2008)
Over the past twenty-five years, a significant number of surrogate decision makers have demanded that...
Legal Issues (The Right to Privacy and Lawsuits) (with Paul F. Rothstein), Airline Passenger Security: New Technologies and Implementation (1996)
4. Jurisprudence
Monstrous Impersonation: A Critique of Consent-Based Justifications for Hard Paternalism, UMKC Law Review (2005)
Restricting a person's substantially voluntary, self-regarding conduct primarily for the sake of that person is...
Counting the Dragon’s Teeth and Claws: The Definition of Hard Paternalism, Georgia State University Law Review (2004)
In his classic 1897 essay, The Path of the Law, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. warned...