Getting to Know Professor Govind Persad
This fall, we are excited to welcome Professor Govind Persad to our faculty as Associate Professor of Law!Ìý
Professor Persad’s research applies methods from bioethics and social philosophy to law in order to address longstanding and new problems at the interface of health law and policy.ÌýÌý
His recent writing appears in law reviews, such as the Michigan Law Review, Iowa Law Review, and Emory Law Journal, as well as high-profile peer reviewed medical and scientific journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, JAMA, and The Lancet. Professor Persad is also a frequent media commentator on health law and policy, with op-eds in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal and media appearances on NPR and elsewhere. He is the 2025-27 Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics at the National Academies of Medicine. His research has also beenHis research has been supported by a 2018-21 Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholars Award, and he received the 2022 Baruch A. Brody Award in Bioethics.Ìý
Professor Persad’s current projects include a book on the fair allocation of scarce medical resources (under contract with Cambridge University Press); an empirical study of federal and state laws concerning health disparities and inequities; and research on ethical and policy issues related to novel weight-management drugs.ÌýÌý
Professor Persad previously taught at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to entering academia, he clerked for the Hon. Carlos F. Lucero on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He received his JD and PhD from Stanford University. Ìý
Learn more about Professor Persad in the Q&A below.ÌýÌý
What excites you most about joining the faculty at Colorado Law?Ìý
GP: I'm excited to join a faculty committed to interdisciplinary research and home to an active health law program. Health law scholarship naturally involves cross-disciplinary collaborations, making Colorado Law's research university environment ideal for this work.ÌýÌý
Can you share a bit about any current projects you are working on?ÌýÌýÌý
GP: I am currently writing a book for Cambridge University Press on how to fairly allocate scarce medical resources. The book examines a range of resources—from transplantable organs and ICU beds to malaria vaccines—and explores the ethical principles that should guide their distribution. The book begins by discussing fundamental ethical goals for allocation policies, then discusses whether and how policies should consider individual characteristics (like health status, age, or occupation) when pursuing these goals, and how allocation policies should be implemented in practice. The book bridges three of my areas of interest: antidiscrimination law, health policy, and philosophical bioethics.Ìý
What is your proudest career accomplishment so far?ÌýÌý
GP: During the COVID-19 pandemic, I helped lead an international team of authors collaborating on papers about the and the . It was a special honor to be able to collaborate with experts whose writings I’d read since I was an undergraduate, and to work on a project that was relevant to crucial issues in that moment and to policymakers.Ìý
What inspired you to pursue a legal career?Ìý
GP: When I finished undergrad, law school was not on my mind at all. From 2006-08, I was a post-baccalaureate fellow at the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. The fellows’ responsibilities included serving on the ethics consultation service, which provided support and advice to medical researchers at the NIH campus, and observing on the Institutional Review Boards that oversee the research studies conducted at NIH. Understanding how the regulations around this research sought to promote ethical goals was fascinating. More importantly, the Department had a great group of visiting scholars, including one who had completed both a JD and PhD. Seeing the type of research she’d been able to do inspired me to pursue a similar path.ÌýÌý
How does your background in philosophy help inform your work as a legal scholar and teacher?Ìý
GP: Legal concepts like causation, intent, and harm have deep roots in philosophy. When I teach or write about these concepts in contract or tort law, I can draw valuable insights from philosophical literature. My health law research, meanwhile, often examines normative questions: how should we define "affordable health care," and what arrangements ought to exist for delivering health care or promoting health? Scholarship in applied ethics and political philosophy offers essential frameworks for addressing these questions.Ìý
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