Northeastern Law Earns Top Rankings and National Recognition for Health Law 

09.01.26 — Northeastern University School of Law has once again been recognized as a national leader in health law. preLaw magazine named Northeastern to its 2026 Health Law Honor Roll with an “A+” grade, and earlier this spring, U.S. News & World Report ranked the school No. 9 in health care law in its 2026–2027 Best Graduate Schools rankings — the fifth consecutive year Northeastern’s health law program has placed in the nation’s top 10.  

The recognitions reflect the range and depth of Northeastern Law’s health-related centers, institutes and initiatives, which span public health law, pharmaceutical and medical device regulation, judicial education, health equity, harm reduction and emerging issues at the intersection of law, artificial intelligence and health. 

“Taken together, this year’s rankings and recognitions affirm what Northeastern Law has built over more than a decade: a health law program that pairs rigorous scholarship with real-world impact and is actively shaping policy on public health, gambling, harm reduction, medical device safety, the social determinants of health and how all of this interacts with AI, all while training the next generation of health law leaders,” said Dean James Hackney. 

Among Northeastern Law’s notable programs and recent activities: 

The Center for Health Policy and Law (CHPL), co-directed by Professors Claudia Haupt and Wendy E. Parmet, continues to be recognized as a nationally prominent hub for interdisciplinary approaches to today’s public health challenges. CHPL’s flagship program, Salus Populi, remains the country’s only initiative dedicated to educating judges and legal professionals about the social determinants of health, and it has now trained more than 2,100 judges, court personnel and legal professionals nationwide. That work continues to draw major philanthropic support. Salus Populi recently secured its third grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation — a two-year, $600,000 award that brings the foundation’s total investment in the program to $900,000 — and the initiative has also been sustained over the years by significant funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which helped launch the program in 2020 and has renewed its support multiple times since, including a $1 million award to expand the program’s reach. 

The Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) — long known for its pioneering work on tobacco litigation — has extended its public health litigation model to the rapidly growing problem of predatory gambling. Under the direction of Professor Richard Daynard, PHAI recently launched Families and Friends of Gamblers to give families and friends impacted by gambling addiction a collective voice. PHAI also hosted an international symposium bringing together researchers, advocates and federal policymakers to examine gambling through a public health lens and to identify strategies for preventing gambling-related harm. Through this work, students are getting a firsthand look at how legal advocacy can shape healthcare policy and strengthen community well-being. Under the direction of Professor Mark Gottlieb, PHAI also leads the law school’s Public Health Advocacy Clinic, through which law students participate in developing litigation or regulatory actions to improve public health. 

The Action Lab at the Center for Health Policy and Law, led by Professor Leo Beletsky, recently saw a legal theory it helped develop translate into a landmark result. A federal settlement in Gather Church v. Lewis County — the first federal case to use the Americans with Disabilities Act to challenge discriminatory zoning aimed at a syringe service program — established important new ADA protections for harm reduction programs nationwide. The case, which resulted in the county repealing its ordinance and paying $500,000 in attorney's fees, was litigated in part by two Action Lab-trained attorneys and traces its legal roots back to scholarship developed in the Action Labs Drug Law and Policy course years earlier. 

The Amy J. Reed Collaborative for Medical Device Safety (AJRC), a joint venture of Northeastern Law and Tufts Medical Center co-directed by Professors David A. Simon and Hooman Noorchashm, has kept up an active docket of advocacy before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In recent months, AJRC and its affiliated nonprofit, Harmed Americans for Reform in Medical-Device Safety, have filed citizen petitions urging the FDA to rescind clearance for robotic mastectomy procedures pending further safety data, to investigate promotional claims about the same procedure, to scrutinize the off-label use of robotic and VATS systems in cardiac ablation for elderly patients, to create a public database of medical device labels, and to recall a lab-grown blood vessel product over safety concerns. The collaborative’s work reflects Northeastern Law’s broader commitment to using legal tools to hold the medical device industry accountable and to protect patient safety. 

Beyond its centers and institutes, Northeastern Law offers a robust health law curriculum, including a JD x Certificate in Health Law and Policy, a Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Compliance, an LLM concentration in Health Policy and Law, and dual-degree JD/MPH programs with Northeastern’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences and Tufts University School of Medicine. 

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