Lawrence Gostin

Lawrence Oglethorpe Gostin (born October 19, 1949) is an American law professor at Georgetown University Law Center who specializes in global health law as well as the law of public health and human rights. Formerly a Fulbright Fellow, Gostin focuses on health law and holds appointments at Georgetown University, including as Distinguished University Professor, the university's highest faculty honor. He is the lead author of the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and is a contributor to journals on medicine and law.

Early life and education

Lawrence Oglethorpe Gostin was born in New York City on October 19, 1949, the son of Joseph and Sylvia Gostin. He received a B.A. degree in psychology from the State University of New York at Brockport in 1971 and a J.D. from the Duke University School of Law in 1974. From 1974 to 1975, Gostin served as a Fulbright Fellow in psychiatry and law at the University of Oxford and the University of London.

Career

Following his Fulbright fellowship, Gostin remained in the United Kingdom and became the legal director of mental health charity Mind. There, he served as inaugural head of the charity's legal and welfare rights department and worked there until 1983. During his time at Mind, he was instrumental in the organization's campaign regarding reform of mental health legislation. According to Jennifer Brown, Gostin's writings on "new legalism" – a regulatory philosophy which combined protection of mental health patients' civil rights with entitlement to proper mental health treatment – was a large influence on the Mental Health Act 1983. Gostin himself estimated that two thirds of the act were based on proposals from Mind or from his writings. As legal director, Gostin also oversaw the filing of many test cases at the European Commission of Human Rights and European Court of Human Rights "highlighting the absence of possibilities for a legal review of detention [under UK mental health legislation] for many."

From 1983 to 1985, Gostin was the general secretary of the National Council for Civil Liberties in the United Kingdom. From 1986 to 1994, he was executive director of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics; during the period 1987 to 1988, he was also legislative counsel to Senator Edward Kennedy. In 1994, the State University of New York awarded Gostin a Doctor of Laws (Hon.) degree. He was also elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2000.

Additionally, from 1985 to 1994, Gostin was an adjunct faculty member in law and public health at Harvard University, where he also served under William J. Curran as the associate director of the World Health Organization collaborating center on health legislation from 1988 to 1994. After leaving Harvard, Gostin joined the faculty of Georgetown University in 1994.

In December 2001, Gostin released a draft of the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, a legislation model backed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention intended to "increase state powers to respond to bioterrorism or other outbreaks of disease". Although Gostin, as lead author of the act, published an article supporting it in JAMA, the Model Act attracted criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union,

From 2004 to 2008, Gostin served as the associate dean for research at Georgetown Law. In 2007, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health. From 2010 to 2016, he served as the editor-in-chief of the MDPI journal Laws (). He was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Sydney in 2012. In 2012, the president of Georgetown University named Gostin University Professor (also called Distinguished University Professor; the highest professional honor for a Georgetown faculty member) in honor of his "outstanding record of scholarly accomplishment".

Since its launch in 2015, Gostin has served with John Monahan as co-chairs of the Lancet–O'Neill Institute Commission on Global Health and the Law, which aims to study the role of law in addressing global health issues. The O’Neill Institute was named a World Health Organization collaborating center on public health law and human rights in 2017. Since 2017, Gostin has also been the global health and legal editor of JAMA. It has been endorsed by Ban Ki-moon and Michel Sidibé.

Speaking and views

Gostin has given multiple keynote addresses at conferences, and has been awarded distinguished lectures at institutions in the United States and abroad. webinars and conferences of the Consortium on Law and Values at the University of Minnesota, and to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Gostin gave the spring LIFE B. Braun Lecture at the University of Lucerne in Switzerland in 2026.

Gostin presented on the national health information infrastructure at an Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation conference in 2003. He was a speaker in a workshop at the 2025 World Health Summit. In December 2025, Gostin participated in a "fireside chat" with Dean Cathy Bradley at the Colorado School of Public Health.

In a January 2020 interview with NPR, Gostin argued against travel restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, stating, "the risk is extraordinarily low for people in the United States." In an April 2021 interview with Vox, he described his previous belief about travel restrictions being bad as an "almost religious belief" with no evidence behind it, saying "I have now realized ... that our belief about travel restrictions was just that — a belief. It was evidence-free".

Regarding the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Gostin said the Dobbs decision was "much more extreme than the justices are making it out to be". Speaking on Democracy Now! in January 2025, Gostin called President Donald Trump's withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organization "an attack on science, public health and public health institutions".

Honors and awards

As of 2026, the magazine Washingtonian lists Gostin among the top 500 most influential people shaping policy in America. Gostin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the Hastings Center and Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He is profiled in the St. Martin's Press and A. & C. Black Who's Who series, as well as in Marquis Who's Who.

2018 – Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, Marquis Who's Who
2015 – Lifetime Achievement in Public Health Law, American Public Health Association
2012 – Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Sydney
2007 – Elected Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health
2006 – Honorary Fellow, Cardiff University, for "international distinction and scholarship in law and public health"
2006 – Adam Yarmolinsky Medal, National Academy of Medicine, for "a member ... outside the health and medical sciences ... [who has] contributed in multiple ways to the mission of the NAM"
2000 – Elected Member of the National Academy of Medicine
1994 – Honorary Doctor of Laws, State University of New York, the "highest form of recognition offered by the Board of Trustees ... to persons of exceptional distinction outside the University"
1987 – Key to Tohoku University, for "distinguished contributions to human rights in mental health"
1983 – Rosemary Delbridge Memorial Award, National Consumer Council, for "the person who has most influenced parliament for the welfare of society"

<small>Source: Georgetown Law