Amy Kapczynski is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Faculty Co-Director of the Law and Political Economy Project, cofounder of the Law and Political Economy blog, and Faculty Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership. Her research focuses on law and political economy, and theorizes the failures of legal logic and structure that condition contemporary inequality, precarity, and hollowed out democracy. Her primary areas of focus include health justice and the political economy of technology. She has worked closely with social movements involved in campaigns for access to medicines in the U.S. as well as transnationally, and more recently as part of a coalition calling for a Community Health Corps to combat COVID-19. Kapczynski has published widely, including in law reviews, academic journals, op-eds, and journals like the Boston Review. Prior to joining the Yale faculty in 2012, she taught at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Before teaching, Kapczynski served as a law clerk to Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen G. Breyer at the U.S. Supreme Court, and to Judge Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She received her A.B. from Princeton University, M.Phil. from Cambridge University, M.A. from Queen Mary and Westfield College at University of London, and J.D. from Yale Law School. Read more on her recent scholarship.
As the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris approach, a new report analyzes the issue of interpersonal violence in international sport.
May 20, 2024 MedPage TodayVisiting Professor of Law and Solomon Center Distinguished Visitor Aaron Kesselheim was quoted about the rarity of successful challenges to proposed pharmaceutical mergers by the FTC. Professor of Law Amy Kapczynski ’03 was also quoted.
May 20, 2024 JAMA NetworkAmy Kapczynski ’03 is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Faculty Co-Director of the Law and Political Economy Project, cofounder of the Law and Political Economy blog, and Faculty Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership.
December 30, 2023 MarketplaceProfessor of Law Amy Kapczynski '03 explains how drugmakers have been able to extend their patents and how negotiations by Medicare could change that.
In this episode of "Inside Yale Law School," Professor Amy Kapczynski ’03 recalls her battles as a law student with drug companies — and Yale University — over their patent policies on AIDS drugs. She also shares her fascination with intellectual property law and political economy, and why we all need to be kinder to each other.
Europe’s highest human rights court cited a brief by the Yale Global Health Justice Partnership and World Medical Association when it ruled that Switzerland failed champion runner Caster Semenya in her challenge of track and field rules that limit natural testosterone levels for female athletes.
June 20, 2023Associate Professor (Adjunct) of Law Alice Miller is Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale Law School. Daniel Newton is the Gender & Sexuality Fellow at the Global Health Justice Partnership. Megan Handau is a member of the Yale Law School class of 2025. Beatrice Codianni is founder and former Executive Director of the Sex Workers and Allies Network.
April 28, 2023 The SyllabusProfessor of Law Amy Kapczynski ’03 gives an interview about her work on law and political economy.
The Yale Global Health Justice Partnership (GHJP) and the Sex Workers Project (SWP) of the Urban Justice Center have jointly released a handbook on district attorneys’ policies of non-prosecution of sex work-related charges.
February 14, 2023 The LPE ProjectAmy Kapczynski ’03 is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Faculty Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership, and Faculty Co-Director of the Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency.
PUBLISHED ARTICLES
A Conversation between Wendy Brown and Amy Kapczynski, The South Atlantic Quarterly 121:2, Duke University Press, April 1, 2022 (with Wendy Brown)
Transparency of Regulatory Data across the European Medicines Agency, Health Canada, and US Food and Drug Administration, Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, Vol. 49 No. 3, Fall 2021 (with Alexander C. Egilman, Margaret E. McCarthy, Anita T. Luxkaranayagam, Christopher J. Morten, Matthew Herder, Joshua D. Wallach and Joseph S. Ross.
Building a Law-and-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond the Twentieth-Century Synthesis, Yale Law Journal, Apr. 2020 (with Jedediah Britton-Purdy, David Singh Grewal, & K. Sabeel Rahman)
The Law of Informational Capitalism, Yale Law Journal, Mar. 2020 (Review of SHOSHANA ZUBOFF, THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM and JULIE COHEN, BETWEEN TRUTH AND POWER)
Patents, trade and medicines: past, present and future (with Ken Shadlen and Bhaven Sampat), 27 Rev. Int’l Pol. Econ. 75 (2019)
Order without Intellectual Property Law: Open Science in Influenza, 102 Cornell L. Rev. 1539 (2017)
“Access to Knowledge: A Conceptual Genealogy,” in ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE IN THE AGE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (Zone Press 2010, Gaëlle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski, eds.)
EDITED BOOKS
ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE IN THE AGE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (Zone Press 2010, Gaëlle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski, eds.)
RETHINKING LAW (MIT Press, 2022, Amy Kapczynski, ed.)
COMMENTARIES AND OP-EDS
We’ll never reach herd immunity if we don’t vaccinate more non-White people, Wash. Post, Feb. 26, 2021 (with Gregg Gonsalves and David Herman)
How Law Made Neoliberalism, Boston Review Feb. 22, 2021 (with Jedediah Britton-Purdy and David Grewal)
Remdesivir Could be in Short Supply: Here’s a Fix, NY Times, July 28, 2020 (with Paul Biddinger and Rochelle Walensky)
The New Politics of Care, BOSTON REVIEW, Apr. 2020 (with Gregg Gonsalves)
Markets vs. Lives, BOSTON REVIEW, Mar. 2020 (with Gregg Gonsalves)
Alone Against the Virus, BOSTON REVIEW, Mar. 2020 (with Gregg Gonsalves)
To Help Develop The Safest, Most Effective Coronavirus Tests, Treatments, and Vaccines, Ensure Public Access To Clinical Research Data, Health Affairs Blog, Mar. 26, 2020 (with Chris Morten, Joe Ross, and Harlan Krumholz)
Confidentiality Orders and Public Interest in Drug and Medical Device Litigation, JAMA Internal Medicine, Vol. 180 No. 2, 292 (2020) (with Alex Egilman, Aaron Kesselheim, Harlan Krumholz, Joe Ross, and Jeanie Kim)
Free Speech Incorporated, BOSTON REVIEW, Dec. 5, 2019
United States v. Gilead: Can a Lawsuit Yield Better Access To PrEP?, Health Affairs Blog, Nov. 18, 2019 (with Christopher Morten)
Confidentiality Orders in Drug, Device Lawsuits Harm Patients and the Public, StatNews, Nov. 11, 2019 (with Alexander Egilman and Joe Ross)
Assessing Drug Pricing Reform Proposals: The Real Leverage And Benefits Of Competitive Licensing, HEALTH AFFAIRS BLOG, Nov. 4, 2019 (with Christopher Morten)
Political Economy and Human Rights: Paths Forward, Humanity Blog, Oct. 4, 2019 (part of a symposium on my article, The Right to Medicines in an Age of Neoliberalism)
There is no liberal case for Brett Kavanaugh, LA Times, Aug. 1, 2018 (with David Grewal and Issa Kohler-Hausmann)
Clinical Trial Transparency: The FDA Should and Can Do More, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 45 S2, pp. 33-38, Jan. 10, 2018 (with Jeanie Kim)
Legal Challenges to State Drug Pricing Laws, JAMA, 2018; 319(9):865–866 (with Theodore Lee and Aaron Kesselheim)
The TPP and Drug Prices: Not a Settled Matter, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Oct. 28, 2016 (with Bhaven N. Sampat and Kenneth C. Shadlen)
A Simple Way for the Government to Curb Inflated Drug Prices, WASHINGTON POST, May 12, 2016 (with Zain Rizvi and Aaron Kesselheim)
Amy Kapczynski, Resist Pressure at Any Price, BUSINESS TODAY (India), Jan. 17, 2016 (with David Singh Grewal)
No Fast Track for Unfair Trade Deals, HUFFINGTON POST, June 11, 2015 (with Judith Resnik)
Intellectual Property’s Leviathan, 77 LAW & CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS 131 (2014)
Going Local in the Era of TRIPS Implementation, in BALANCING HEALTH AND WEALTH: THE BATTLE OVER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND ACCESS TO MEDICINES IN LATIN AMERICA 263 (Rochelle C. Dreyfuss and Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito eds., 2014) (Spanish edition published 2016)
Engineered in India: Patent Law 2.0, 369 NEW ENG. J. MED. 497 (2013) (invited "Perspective" analysis)
Going It Alone: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement as a Sole Executive Agreement, ASIL Insights, Aug. 24, 2011 (with Oona A. Hathaway)
Is Bayh-Dole Good for Developing Countries? Lessons from the US Experience, 6 PLOS BIOLOGY e262 (Oct. 1, 2008) (with Anthony D. So, Bhaven N. Sampat, Arti K. Rai, Robert Cook-Deegan, Jerome H. Reichman, and Robert Weissman)
