TALLAHASEE—College of Law professor Lois Shepherd’s new casebook, Bioethics and The Law has just been published by Aspen Publishers with a teachers’ manual and website forthcoming. The book covers issues of access to health care, medical experimentation, public health, and applications of new biotechnology, such as embryonic stem cell research and cloning. 

“My strength in the legal aspects of end-of-life decision making combined well with my co-author's strength in reproductive rights, which are the two topics that dominate bioethics inquiry today,” Shepherd said. The casebook is co-authored by Janet Dolgin, a professor at Hofstra University School of Law. 

The authors take a multidisciplinary approach in the book, presenting not only legal cases but also materials written by doctors, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and historians. "Issues in this field are very controversial, and instead of shying away from that controversy, we've tended to include strong expressions from different points of view, which should stimulate good class discussion," Shepherd said. The book also contains a number of hypothetical and public policy problems which provide an effective mechanism for prompting in-depth class discussion. 

Shepherd was named the D’Alemberte Professor in 2004 and has been a courtesy faculty member of the FSU College of Medicine since 2002. 

Author of numerous articles on bioethics and health law, Shepherd teaches Contracts, Professional Responsibility, and Bioethics and the Law. Before coming to Florida State, she was with the Charlotte, North Carolina, law firm of Robinson, Bradshaw, and Hinson. She received her B.A. with highest honors, from the University of North Carolina, and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal. 

FSU College of Law faculty have authored more than 10 current casebooks, in fields such as civil procedure, legal ethics, taxation, environmental law, ocean and coastal law, energy law, endangered species regulation, international intellectual property, and law and religion.