Texas Law professor Elizabeth Sepper has been honored with the 2022 McDonald-Merrill-Ketcham Memorial Lectureship and Award for Excellence presented by the Hall Center for Law and Health at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. This lectureship and award program brings leading scholars and policy makers in the fields of law and medicine to the Indianapolis campus for the benefit of students, faculty, the bar and the medical community.
“It’s such an honor to be selected to speak on conscience in healthcare for the McDonald-Merrill-Ketcham Memorial lecture,” said Sepper. “I am elated to join the list of previous awardees — a who’s who list of top-notch health law scholars — including UT Law’s own Professor William Sage.”
Prof. Sepper will be the keynote speaker at the McDonald Merrill Ketcham Award Lecture on March 25, 2022, with her presentation titled, “The Law and Ethics of Conscience in Healthcare.” The program includes a panel discussion on reproductive rights in healthcare following Sepper’s lecture.
Prof. Sepper provided insight on the lecture topic. “As states move to prohibit reproductive and LGBTQ-affirming care, providers will increasingly face conflicts with their consciences as well as with their professional standards of care,” she noted. “This lecture offers a stellar opportunity to deepen and update my long-standing work on conscientious refusal and commitment.”
A nationally recognized scholar of religious liberty, health law, and equality, Prof. Sepper has written extensively on conscientious refusals to provide reproductive and end-of-life healthcare and on conflicts over religion and insurance coverage. Her articles have appeared in top journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, and Harvard Journal of Gender & Law. Additionally, as a legal expert, she is often quoted in articles which are featured in Texas Law’s Faculty in the News.
Prof. Sepper received her B.A. in History magna cum laude with distinction from Boston University. She earned her LL.M. and J.D. magna cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she served as a notes editor of New York University Law Review. Following law school, she clerked for the Hon. Marjorie Rendell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, practiced human rights law with a focus on women’s rights, and was a Center for Reproductive Rights fellow at Columbia Law School. Prior to joining the Texas faculty, she was a professor at Washington University School of Law.