MORGANTOWN – Noted legal scholar and current law professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law Mary Crossley spoke to attendees Feb. 10 at the West Virginia University College of Law regarding her thoughts on law and medicine.
“I was honored to be invited to give the John W. Fisher II Lecture," Crossley told The West Virginia Record. "I enjoyed the chance to meet Dean Fisher the evening before the lecture, and I know that he was a great leader for the WVU College of Law.”
She gave her speech, “Ending-Life Medical Decisions: Some Disability Perspectives and Parallels to Black Lives Matter,” to discuss her thoughts and concerns with the disabled community when life-ending decisions should appear.
“Topics relating to how people with disabilities experience the health care system and how the law might address instances of health care-related injustice that they experience have interested me for many years,” Crossley said. “My lecture sought to do that both by describing why many people with disabilities distrust the health care system and by drawing parallels to the Black Lives Matter movement, which many people may be more familiar with.
“Most people will become disabled at some point in their lives, but I think that many people fear becoming disabled,” she explained.
During her talk, she sought to create a similarity between able-bodied people and those with disabilities. To this she said, “Able-bodied people may not always be comfortable thinking about what justice requires for people with disabilities and may not appreciate the perspective of disabled people.”
Currently, she focuses her studies on health care inequality concerns. She also “examines how recent trends in health insurance coverage function to discriminate against unhealthy people, to a consideration of how assisted reproductive technologies implicate equality concerns,” she noted.
Additionally, she has background knowledge in health care law for corporations.
West Virginia University said of Crossley’s background, “In 2014-15, Crossley was a faculty mentor for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Future of Public Health Law Education Faculty Fellowship Program. She was also a public health scholar in residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.”
Prior to being a professor and dean from 2005-2012 at Pittsburgh, she devoted her time to teaching at Florida State University and the University of California Hastings College of Law. While teaching at California, she was promoted to the position as associate academic dean, the university's press release noted.
Crossley received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia. From there she attended Vanderbuilt University to receive her law degree. Crossley is also a noted author.
The John W. Fisher II Lecture in Law and Medicine talk held at West Virginia, was free admission to students at the college. West Virginia said the event was held on behalf of Thomas S. Clark, M.D., and Jean Clark. Both helped to develop the Clark Family Lecture Series, which “provides lectures in 10 fields of study throughout West Virginia University,” according to a press release.