Education
- B.A. in philosophy from Amherst College
- J.D. (magna cum laude) from Syracuse University College of Law
Editor-in-chief, Syracuse Law Review
Awards
- Dedman School of Law outstanding teacher award (1986-1987 and 1996-1997)
- Dallas County Medical Society’s Heath Award for outstanding leadership and service to medicine and to the community of Dallas (2002)
- SMU's "President's Associates Outstanding Faculty Award" to tenured faculty member who has sustained high achievement as a teacher and whose scholarship makes a meaningful contribution to student learning (2006-2007)
Employment
- Associate at Nixon, Hargrave, Devans & Doyle (now Nixon Peabody LLP) from 1977-1979
- Law clerk at the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1979-1980 - Associate at Covington & Burling from 1980-1984, where he practiced in the areas of securities fraud, antitrust, communications law, and election law.
- SMU since 1984
I am the Director of the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at Southern Methodist University; Associate Professor at SMU’s Dedman School of Law; Adjunct Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas - Southwestern Medical School; and of counsel, Haynes and Boone, all in Dallas. My courses include health care law, bioethics, a literature course for medical students and law students together (titled, unsurprisingly, “Law, Literature & Medicine”), nonprofit organizations, legislation, administrative law, and constitutional law.
I serve on the Texas Advance Directives Coalition, which was responsible for drafting the 1999 Advance Directives Act and its 2003 amendments. I am a member of five hospital ethics committees and co-chair two of them (at Dallas County's Parkland Health & Hospital System and Children's Medical Center of Dallas).
Other community and professional activities include: a co-founder of the Dallas Legal Hospice, Texas’ first pro bono legal clinic for persons with HIV disease and persons with terminal illnesses; past president of the board of trustees of St. John’s Episcopal School, and past president of the William “Mac” Taylor Chapter of the American Inn of Court. I served on the Examination Commission of the Texas Board of Legal Specialization’s health law certification exam for the firstg six years of its existence and have been a member of the Council of the Health Law Section of the State Bar of Texas since 1997. I've been a member of the Advisory Board for BNA’s Health Law Reporter since the beginning of that publication and serve on the Advisory Boards of the Journal of Health Law and Matthew Bender’s Health Care Law Monthly. I am also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Program in Ethics in Science and Medicine at the University of Texas – Southwestern Medical Center; the editor of the Medical Humanities Series of the SMU Press; and the regular poetry columnist for the Dallas Morning News. . In 2005 I was inducted into the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Health Lawyers Association and was a member of their board of directors from 1997 to 2003.