Health Law, Ethics & Policy Seminar Series: Rebecca Cook

HEALTH LAW, ETHICS & POLICY SEMINAR SERIES 

presents 

Rebecca J. Cook
Professor of Law Emerita
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto 

Lessons learned from the amicus brief for the Zika case pending before the
Supreme Federal Court of Brazil 

12:30 – 2:00
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Solarium (room FA2) – Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park 

COMMENTATOR:
C. Tess Sheldon, MSc, JD, PhD
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto;
staff lawyer at ARCH Disability Law Centre 

This paper will provide an overview of the case on the prevention and remedy of the congenital Zika virus syndrome pending before the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil. It will then explain how the amicus brief on international human rights obligations to prevent and remedy the syndrome was framed. Finally, using socio-legal analyses and feminist theories, it will explore the lessons learned on how the brief might have been differently framed to foster better understanding of rights related to health equity, disability and life. 

Bio:  A.B. (Barnard), M.A. (Tufts), M.P.A. (Harvard), J.D. (Georgetown), LL.M. (Columbia), J.S.D. (Columbia), called to the Bar of Washington, D.C.  Rebecca Cook is a Professor in the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Medicine and the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto; and Co-Director, International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Programme, University of Toronto. She is ethical and legal issues co-editor of the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and serves on the editorial advisory boards of Human Rights Quarterly and Reproductive Health Matters.  She is the recipient of the Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Contribution to Women’s Health by the International Federation of Gynecologists and Obstetricians, the Ludwik and Estelle Jus Memorial Human Rights Prize, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

A light lunch will be served.

For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.