Mason Marks

Mason Marks, M.D., J.D. is the Florida Bar Health Law Section Professor of Law at the Florida State University College of Law. In 2024, he was a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.  

At Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, Marks is a senior fellow who leads the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR), which he co-founded in 2021. He is also a visiting fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Professor Marks previously served as a joint fellow-in-residence at Harvard Law School and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, researching the law and ethics of technological and biomedical innovation, and a research scholar at the Information Law Institute at NYU School of Law.  

Professor Marks publishes academic scholarship focused on state and federal drug laws, First Amendment rights such as freedom of thought and other civil liberties, and artificial intelligence (AI) and technology regulation. He is particularly interested in controlled substances regulation and the impact of AI on free thought and medical decision making. His legal scholarship has been published or accepted by the Duke Law Journal, Yale Law Journal Forum, Harvard Law Review Forum, Fordham Law Review, Boston University Law Review, Columbia Law Review Forum, Florida Law Review, UC Irvine Law Review, UC Davis Law Review, Administrative Law Review, Yale Journal of Law and Technology, and books by Cambridge University Press. His forthcoming book on psychedelic law and politics is under contract with Yale University Press.  

He frequently publishes in peer-reviewed medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Nature Medicine, JAMA Psychiatry, Nature Mental Health, the American Journal of Bioethics, and Neuropharmacology. His academic scholarship has been cited by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the United States Senate, the World Health Organization, and the Federal Trade Commission. In addition to academic scholarship, Professor Marks writes for leading news outlets such as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, Wired, Slate, the Hill, and Vice News. His research and legal commentary have been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, ABC News, Fox News, Bloomberg News, the Economist, NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, HBO’s Last Week Tonight, and other outlets.   

Marks teaches constitutional law, administrative law, health law, drug law, psychedelic law, and related seminars. An expert on the fast-emerging psychedelics industry, he provides technical guidance to state and federal lawmakers and regulators on the evolving controlled substances landscape. He has presented his research at the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, the US Public Health Service, the Massachusetts Medical Society, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.  

Professor Marks received his B.A. from Amherst College, his M.D. from Tufts University, and his J.D. from Vanderbilt University.