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Lewis Grossman Professor WCL Faculty

Degrees
B.A., Yale University 1986 ( summa cum laude)
J.D., Harvard Law School 1990 ( magna cum laude)
Ph.D., History, Yale University 2005

Bio
Lewis Grossman is the Ann Loeb Bronfman Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law, where he has taught since 1997 and where  he served as Associate Dean for Scholarship from 2008 to 2011 and 2022. He teaches and writes in the areas of food and drug law, health law, American  legal history, and civil procedure. He will be a Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School during the winter term in January 2025. He has also been a  Visiting Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and a Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) Fellow at Princeton University.


Prior to joining the American University faculty, Professor Grossman was an associate at Covington  Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Before that, he clerked for Chief Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.


Professor Grossman is the author of Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America (Oxford  University Press 2021). His scholarship has appeared in the Cornell Law  Review, Iowa Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, Law and History Review, Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law  Ethics,and Administrative Law Review, among others. He has also published in medical and scientific journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine and Science, and has contributed chapters to volumes  published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Columbia University Press. In addition, Professor Grossman is the co-author of Food and Drug Law: Cases and Materials, the leading text in the field, and of a widely used supplement to the first-year civil procedure course titled A Documentary Companion to A Civil Action. He has served as a member or legal consultant on five committees of the Health and Medicine Division  (formerly the Institute of Medicine) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He has recently been representing a national group of food and drug law scholars that has submitted amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts defending FDA’s approval and regulation of the abortion drug mifepristone.


Professor Grossman earned his Ph.D. in History from Yale University, where he was awarded the George Washington Egleston Prize for Best Dissertation in the Field of American History. He received a J.D magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and a B.A. summa cum laude from Yale University.
See Also
Areas of Specialization
Administrative Law
Civil Procedure
Food and Drug Law
Health Law
Law and Government
Law and the Humanities
Legal History
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

AU Experts

Area of Expertise

Food and drug law: FDA regulation of foods, dietary supplements, drugs, medical devices, biologics, cosmetics, and tobacco products; litigation and civil procedure; American legal and constitutional history; law and the humannities

Additional Information

Lewis Grossman is Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law, where he has taught since 1997 and where he served as Associate Dean for Scholarship from 2008 to 2011. He teaches and writes in the areas of American legal history, food and drug law, health law, and civil procedure. He has also been a Visiting Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and a Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) Fellow at Princeton University. Prior to joining the American University faculty, he was an associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. Before that, he clerked for Chief Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Professor Grossman’s scholarship has appeared in the Cornell Law Review, Law and History Review, Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics, and Administrative Law Review, among others. He has made recent contributions to volumes published by Oxford University Press and Columbia University Press. He is the co-author of Food and Drug Law: Cases and Materials (with Peter Barton Hutt and Richard A. Merrill) and of a widely used supplement to the first-year civil procedure course titled A Documentary Companion to A Civil Action (with Robert G. Vaughn). Professor Grossman is currently at work on a book titled Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America, which will be published by Oxford University Press. He has served as a member or legal consultant on three committees of the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine). Professor Grossman earned his Ph.D. in History from Yale University, where he was awarded the George Washington Egleston Prize for Best Dissertation in the Field of American History.

For the Media

To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

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