Decorated with extensive experience in science and health law, graduate degrees in chemistry and law, and a ballcap from Absolute Bagels, Professor Chris Morten is one of Columbia Law School’s (CLS) newest, friendliest, and most eagerly received professors. Any student interested in how science and technology affect the public interest would look forward to sitting down with him. Hoping to learn more about his plans to engage science- and technology-minded students at CLS, I reached out to Professor Morten to talk about his concept of the legal landscape and his plans as a new faculty member. His extensive resume is beyond the scope of this blog post, but the impression he gives – one of sincere interest in the people he works with and zeal for delving into cutting-edge legal issues – is certainly not.
This Spring, Professor Morten will serve as the founding director for one of Columbia Law School’s most salient new initiatives: the Science, Health, & Information Clinic (SHIC). The clinic will serve the public interest by guiding students as they provide pro bono legal services to clients in overlapping science, technology, and health sectors. Its main focus is increasing equitable access to scientific, technical, medical, and informational resources across identities, and Professor Morten has tailored SHIC to tackle some of the policies and practices in this sector most damaging to marginalized communities.
Professor Morten specifies that the clinic will be centered around new social and economic problems, and this focus will benefit clients and students in several ways. First, he notes that “the existing ecosystem of public interest legal organizations, government agencies, and law school clinics that work on cutting-edge tech-and-social-justice problems is relatively small.” For this reason, the professor expects the clinic’s impact will be significant in the legal landscape at large and, more importantly, in the lives of the people the clinic will serve. Also, facing emerging issues offers a unique opportunity for students to be heard. “When a factual or legal issue is new,” says Morten, “there’s usually no pre-set ‘blueprint’ or ‘playbook’ for how to respond to it. That can be challenging, but it’s also leveling, even liberating.” This creative approach is tried and true. Students in Professor Morten’s previous clinics have had a tangible impact in national conversations about law and policy, even being cited by Senators Klobuchar and Warren and Representative Doggett in a letter they sent to the Department of Health and Human Services a couple months ago on prescription drug pricing and access.
Although Professor Morten’s work deals with cutting-edge issues, he is finely tuned into the historical roots of the problems he tackles. In his own words, “the problems we work on [are] inextricably interlinked with ‘old’ (but ongoing and pressing) problems in our society… I see my work, and the clinic’s, as a piece of much bigger struggles for health justice, for economic justice, for racial justice, for gender justice, and so on. In my view, we have to work in solidarity. We can’t meaningfully address any of these inequities until we’re ready to address all of them.” Although the clinic has yet to launch, students at CLS are already heartened by this commitment to intersectionality. Professor Morten has demonstrated this commitment by reaching out proactively to student organizations advancing equity in non-scientific sectors, including, for example, QTPOC and OutLaws, two of CLS’ LGBTQ+ societies. This demonstrates the professor’s initiative and the personable lens through which he views a lawyer’s work. When asked about the role of a public interest lawyer in the community at large, he says that “we owe it our clients and to ourselves to situate our work within bigger democratic movements for change, and to learn from those movements, and to remain responsive and accountable to them, and to focus on empowering those movements rather than ourselves.” Among all of the professor’s wise words on the subject of advocacy and intersectionality at large, one charge in particular struck a chord with me: “Lawyers are disproportionately privileged people—especially as years pass and we get ‘comfortable’—and we can lose touch with reality. It’s really critical to get out in the world and understand how science and technology (and everything else) affects different communities. It’s likewise critical to ask those communities how well the laws and policies that are supposed to govern science and technology actually work for them.”
Professor Morten’s commitment to equitable advocacy is sincere, well-conveyed, and evidenced as much by his tone and general approach as his resume. I believe I speak for all of STLR in saying that I am excited to see what he will accomplish during his time at CLS and hoping to learn from him in the process. CLS students interested in applying for SHIC may do so through LawNet by October 22, 2021. As for everyone else, look out for a friendly face in Morningside Heights and improvements in equitable access to science, technology, information, and medicine nationwide.