Celebrating Professor Wendy Parmet: Defining a Field. Shaping Generations.

Matthews Distinguished University Professor of Law Wendy Parmet has been a transformative force at Northeastern University School of Law for more than four decades, helping to define the field of public health law while inspiring generations of students, scholars and colleagues. A brilliant scholar, prolific author, gifted teacher and generous mentor, Professor Parmet has brought extraordinary intellectual rigor and humanity to her work at the intersection of law, health and society. Her scholarship has shaped national conversations on public health, health law, disability, bioethics and civil rights, establishing her as one of the nation’s foremost public health law scholars.

Professor Parmet’s influence extends from the classroom to the courtroom. In 1998, she served as co-counsel in Bragdon v. Abbott, a landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court affirming protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act for people living with HIV. In Finch v. Commonwealth Connector Authority, she was lead counsel with Health Law Advocates in a case that established that legal immigrants in Massachusetts had a constitutional right to same state-supported healthcare as citizens. Her books, including the seminal Populations, Public Health, and the Law and Constitutional Contagion: COVID, the Courts, and Public Health, have likewise made lasting contributions to the field.

Professor Parmet is founder and current faculty co-director of Northeastern Law’s Center for Health Policy and Law. Through the center, her scholarship and her extraordinary commitment to teaching and mentorship, she has built institutions, advanced the field and influenced generations of lawyers, judges and scholars.

As Professor Parmet steps into retirement, the Northeastern Law community celebrates a remarkable career and legacy. We are profoundly grateful for her intellectual leadership, her generosity as a mentor and her steadfast dedication to using law to advance public health and justice. Her influence will endure in the scholarship she leaves behind, the center she built and the countless students and colleagues whose lives and work she has touched.