NASHVILLE, Tenn. –James F. Blumstein, Centennial Professor of Law, has been named University Professor of Law and Medicine.
A University Professor is a faculty member whose work extends beyond traditional academic fields and disciplinary lines and who brings together diverse segments of the University in both research and teaching. A University Professor holds tenured, primary appointments in at least two schools of the University—in this case, Law and Medicine—and has full-status appointments in each, participating in the teaching, research and service missions of each school.
Blumstein is the first Law School professor to be named a University Professor and one of only three faculty members at Vanderbilt with this title.
“Jim Blumstein is one of the leading scholars in the world in law, medicine and health policy,” said Kent Syverud, dean and Garner Anthony Professor of Law. “This new appointment appropriately celebrates his outstanding contributions in scholarship and in leadership nationally in law and medicine.”
Blumstein, who holds his bachelor’s, master’s and law degrees from Yale University, joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1970 and ranks among the nation’s most prominent scholars of health law regulation, health policy, voting rights and law and medicine. He is also director of the Health Policy Center at the Vanderbilt Institute of Public Policy Studies and has served as the principal investigator on numerous grants concerning managed care, hospital management, and medical malpractice.
He is an editor of eight books, including the leading casebook on health law and policy. Blumstein’s peers have recognized his leadership in health law and policy by electing him to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He received the Hartman Teaching Award and the Vanderbilt University Earl Sutherland Prize, the preeminent University recognition for scholarly contribution.
Media contact: Susanne Loftis, 615-322-NEWS, susanne.loftis@vanderbilt.edu