Idaho Law Review: Symposium

Please mark your calendars for Friday, April 7, 2023, to attend the Idaho Law Review Health Law Symposium - Hot Topics in Health Law. The symposium will take place in Boise, Idaho, using a hybrid format (speakers can participate in-person or via zoom). Travel funding is available.

The Idaho Law Review is also seeking proposals for the Health Law Symposium. The Idaho Law Review will publish a range of pieces, from full-length articles to shorter essays, on health law, broadly defined. To facilitate scholarship on emerging and dynamic areas of health law, the Idaho Law Review will offer each selected author flexibility on the length and focus of their piece.

The Idaho Law Review will consider any proposal related to health law but give priority to work that engages current issues and/or recent developments in Idaho that implicate national health law trends. Recent developments put Idaho at the forefront of national health law debates. In 2018, Idaho expanded Medicaid via ballot initiative. In 2021, in response to rising COVID hospitalizations, Idaho instituted crisis standards of care. In the 2022 legislative session, the Idaho Senate blocked a House bill that would have criminalized gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth; and the Governor vetoed a bill that would have banned employers from mandating employee vaccination. And post-Dobbs, Idaho is ground zero for the abortion debate. In August 2022, some of Idaho’s criminal abortion bans went into effect, after the Idaho Supreme Court denied a stay requested by Planned Parenthood. But DOJ has sued Idaho, and a federal court has issued a preliminary injunction, enjoining operation of Idaho’s abortion laws to the extent they conflict with the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act. Other current issues include: rural health care and telemedicine; medical malpractice (evolving standards of care and lost chance causation); legal regulation of medical debt collection; antitrust scrutiny of health care providers; access to mental health services; and the relationship between the public health and criminal justice systems

Submission Procedure

Please submit proposals of 250 to 500 words along with your CV to Lauren Ballenger, Chief Symposium Officer, at smys1464@vandals.uidaho.edu. The Idaho Law Review will make publication decisions on a rolling basis, with a priority deadline of October 31, 2022.

Agenda (all times MT)

• 9:00 - 10:15 a.m.: Hot Topics in Health Law: Behavioral Health
• 10:45 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.: Hot Topics in Health Law: Medicaid/Medicare
• 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.: Lunch Break
• 1:30 - 2:45 p.m.: Hot Topics in Health Law: Vaccines and COVID-19
• 3:15 - 4:30 p.m.: Hot Topics in Health Law: Reproductive Rights
• 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.: Symposium Reception and Networking