End of Life Choices Biographies

Dr. Joel E. Frader, M.D.

Joel E. Frader, M.D. is Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and Division Head, General Academic Pediatrics, Children’s Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Illinois. 

Dr. Frader received a B.A. from Columbia University (1970), his M.D. from Tufts (1974), and an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania (1980) where he was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar.  He is active in and served in leadership positions for many national organizations concerned with pediatrics and with bioethics.  His research interests focus on ethical issues involving children in the health care system as well as innovation in health care, ethical considerations in organ transplantation, and ethics in research involving human subjects.

End of Life Presentation

Robert Raben

Robert Raben heads a legislative consulting and lobbying practice that specializes in intellectual property issues and civil rights issues.   Mr. Raben creates bipartisan legislative and communications strategies for clients, using law and public policy to meet needs.

Over a decade of professional experience as an attorney, senior Hill staffer and Assistant Attorney General has given Mr. Raben a nuanced understanding of both the legal subtleties and the political realities of the issues he handles.  In addition, he brings an aggressively bipartisan approach to the firm, built during a highly respected legislative career that began on Representative Barney Frank’s staff and concluded with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde’s endorsement of his Justice Department appointment.

Mr. Raben began mastering the intricacies of the legislative process in 1993, as Counsel to Congressman Barney Frank, with responsibilities including all issues relating to the Judiciary Committee, Massachusetts fisheries and national civil rights policy and politics. The quality of his work on Frank’s staff soon carried him onto the Judiciary Committee itself, initially as Democratic Counsel for the Subcommittee on the Constitution.  In that role he worked effectively on affirmative action, choice, civil rights, equal employment, fair housing and immigration policy.

Mr. Raben then moved to the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, again serving as Democratic Counsel.  In that capacity, he advised members on copyright, property and trademark law and policy, and on issues relating to the Federal Courts.  Despite his position on Democratic staff, Mr. Raben soon built a reputation for dedication and legal acuity among Democrats and Republicans alike, through work with Republican members and staff on such issues as the omnibus patent reform bill, database protection standards, WIPO implementation and copyright liability for Internet service providers.

In 1999, Mr. Raben’s reputation and effectiveness caught the attention of the White House, earning him an appointment as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and, subsequently, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legislative Affairs.  His confirmation hearing was marked by the endorsements of Chairman Hyde and each of Judiciary’s subcommittee chairs.  In a statement, Senator Orrin Hatch said that Mr. Raben’s confirmation would "place a proven person in a position that is critical to the cooperation of Congress and the Executive branch.” 

After a unanimous confirmation vote, Mr. Raben was charged with overseeing Attorney General Janet Reno’s legislative initiatives and handling extensive Congressional oversight of the department.  He dealt extensively with both bodies of Congress and either side of the aisle as chief lobbyist and strategist on a range of issues, including intellectual property, federalism, tort reform and cybercrime.

A graduate of Wharton and NYU law, Mr. Raben became an associate with the widely respected law firm Arnold & Porter in 1990, specializing in international trade, federal lobbying and white collar criminal defense.  Soon thereafter, he joined the faculty of Georgetown University Law School as an adjunct professor – a position he held until confirmation as Assistant Attorney General.

Sylvia A. Law

For three decades, Sylvia A. Law has been one of the nation's leading scholars in the fields of health law, women's rights, poverty, and constitutional law. She has played a major role in dozens of civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and in lower state and federal courts, and has testified before Congress and state legislatures on a range of issues. In 1984, Law became the first lawyer in the United States selected as a MacArthur Prize Fellow. She is the co-director, with Norman Dorsen, of the Arthur Garfield Hays Program at NYU School of Law. She has been active in the Society of American Law Teachers, served as president of the organization from 1988-1990 and was honored by the organization as Law Teacher of the Year in 2001.

Kathryn L. Tucker

Kathryn L. Tucker, a graduate of Georgetown University Law School, is Director of Legal Affairs for Compassion & Choices, a national non-profit public interest organization dedicated to improving end-of-life care and expanding and protecting the rights of the terminally ill.  Ms. Tucker practiced law with the Seattle based law firm Perkins Coie prior to moving to C & C; she remains Counsel with the firm.  She is Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law and Seattle University School of Law, teaching in the areas of health law and constitutional law.

Ms. Tucker served as lead counsel representing patients and physicians in two federal cases decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1997, asserting that competent dying patients have a constitutional right to choose a humane, hastened death with physician assistance.  Ms. Tucker argued the Washington case in the United States Supreme Court.  These cases are widely acknowledged to have brought much needed attention to improving care of the dying.  Ms. Tucker is also involved with state constitutional litigation involving claims of a similar nature.  Ms. Tucker has successfully defended the Oregon Death With Dignity Act from attacks from the federal legislature and the United States Department of Justice.

Ms. Tucker is recognized as a national leader in spearheading creative and effective efforts to promote improved pain care for seriously ill and dying patients.  She served as co-counsel in the first case to assert that failure to treat pain adequately constitutes elder abuse, which resulted in a finding of liability and a jury verdict award of $1.5M to the family of the patient against the involved physician.  She also achieved a favorable settlement prior to trial with the involved medical center, including an agreement by the medical center to provide pain management training to its nursing and medical staff.  Ms. Tucker was a principal author of legislation requiring pain management education of all licensed physicians passed by the California legislature in 2001.  Ms. Tucker also defends physicians facing adverse consequences for treating pain attentively and aggressively.

Ms. Tucker is listed in the prestigious directory Who’s Who in American Law, was recognized as 1996 Lawyer of the Year, Runner-Up, by the National Law Journal, and as one of the nation’s Outstanding Young Lawyers by the American Bar Association in 1995.  She appears frequently on television and radio discussing end of life care, decision-making and physician-assisted dying.  Media appearances have included Crossfire, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, network news programs, CNN, Larry King, and Fox News.  Her work has been profiled in the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, the Journal of the American Bar Association, Legal Times, George Magazine, Vogue Magazine, Time Magazine, People Magazine, and Health Magazine, among others.

Ms. Tucker is an invited speaker at educational programs on the subjects of improving care at the end of life, end-of-life decision-making, and physician-assisted dying.  She has presented to audiences including the American Bar Association, the Association of American Law Schools, the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, the American Pain Society, the American Academy of Pain Management, the Federation of State Medical Boards, and The American College of Legal Medicine.

End of Life Presentation

Recent presentations

• Willamette Law School, "FEDERALISM IN THE CONTEXT OF ASSISTED DYING: Time for the Laboratory to Extend beyond Oregon, to the Neighboring State of California" (Salem, OR, March 2005)
• National Conference of State Legislatures, Eighth Annual National Health Conference, "Policy Measures to Promote Excellent End-of-Life Care"(Savannah, December 2004)
• American College of Legal Medicine, Mid Year Conference, "Sides of a Coin: Medical Board Action for Over and Under Prescribing of Pain Medication" (New Orleans, October 2004)
• American Alliance of Cancer Pain Initiatives, 15th Annual Meeting, Accessing Pain Management: Effective Policy, Practice and Action (New Brunswick, June 2004)
• American College of Legal Medicine, Annual Conference, "Pain Management and the Assisted Dying Movement" (Las Vegas, March 2004)
• American Society of Law Medicine and Ethics, Health Law Teachers’ Conference, "Choices at the End of Life" (Wilmington, DE, June 2003)
• Federation of State Medical Boards, Annual Conference, "Applying Principles of Professionalism to End of Life Care" (Chicago, April 2003)
• Association of the Bar of the City of New York:  "Oregon v. Ashcroft: Are Good Pain Management and Patient Care in Serious Danger?" (NY, NY, February 2003)
• American Bar Association, "Oregon, et al. v. Department of Justice:  Preserving the State’s Role in Regulating the Practice of Medicine" (Washington, DC, August 2002)
• Citizen Advocacy Center, Annual Conference, "Addressing Pain Management and End-of-Life Care" (San Francisco, November 2002)
• Cooley Law School, Krinock Lecture, "Advocacy for Social Change:  Improving Care and Expanding Options at the End of Life" (Lansing, June 2002)
• National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, Annual Conference, "Pain Management: Advising and Advocating for Good Care, Seeking Accountability for Inadequate Care" (Baltimore, April 2002)
• Colorado Springs Annual Medical Ethics Conference, "Life in the Shadow of Death:  Choices, Options and Difficult Decisions" (Colorado Springs, November 2001)
• American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, Annual Conference, "A New Risk Emerges:  Provider Accountability for Inadequate Treatment of Pain" (Boston, November 2000)
• American Society of Healthcare Risk Management, "A New Risk Emerges:  Provider Accountability for Inadequate Treatment of Pain" (New Orleans, November 2000)
• American Academy of Pain Management, "Provider Accountability for Inadequate Pain Care" (Las Vegas, September 2000)
• American Bar Association Health Law Section, "Provider Accountability for Inadequate Pain Care" (San Diego, February 2000)
• American Pain Society, "Inadequate Treatment of Pain:  Accountability" (Fort Lauderdale, October 1999)
• Federation of State Medical Boards, "Medical Board Corrective Action with Physicians Who Fail to Treat Pain Adequately" (Dallas, March 1998)
• American Association of Law Schools, Annual Meeting,  "The Death with Dignity Movement:  Protecting Rights and Expanding Options after Glucksberg and Quill" (San Francisco, January 1998)
• National Conference of State Legislatures, 1997 Annual Meeting, Choice at the End of Life (Philadelphia, August 1997)
• American Bar Association, 1997 Annual Meeting, Glucksberg and Quill (August 1997)
• Northwestern University School of Law, "Socially Assisted Dying" (Chicago, April 1997)
• Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics, "Comprehensive Care of the Terminally Ill:  A Consensus Development Conference for Guidelines on Aid-In-Dying" (San Francisco, September 1996)
• Virginia Mason Medical Center, "Physician Aid-in-Dying:  Medical, Ethical and Legal Perspectives" (Seattle, June 1996)
• Law Seminars International Conference, Chair and Faculty, "The Right to Die" (Seattle, 1994)

Related Publications

• FEDERALISM IN THE CONTEXT OF ASSISTED DYING:  Time for the Laboratory to Extend beyond Oregon, to the Neighboring State of California, __Willamette L. Rev. __(2005)
• Chapter Author, Physician-Assisted Dying: The Case for Palliative Care and Patient Choice (eds. Timothy Quill and Margaret Battin, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)
• Promoting Good Pain Management in California, California Health Law News (Fall 2004)
• The Chicken and the Egg: The Pursuit of Choice for a Humane Hastened-Death as a Catalyst for Improved End-of-Life Care; Improved End-of-Life Care as a Precondition for Legalization of Assisted Dying, 60 NYU Annual Survey of American Law 355 (2004)
• Medico-Legal Case Report and Commentary:  Inadequate Pain Management in the Context of Terminal Cancer - The Case of Lester Tomlinson, 5 Pain Medicine 214-217 (June 2004)
• Anatomy of a Claim for Failure to Adequately Treat Pain, 39 Trial News 10-11(January 2004)
• End of Life Care, a Human Rights Issue, 30 Hum. Rts. 11 (2003)
• A Piece of the Puzzle: Bringing Accountability to Failure to Treat Pain Adequately, 6 Journal of Palliative Medicine 615-617 (2003)
• Pain Management: Advising and Advocating for Good Care, Seeking Accountability for Inadequate Care, 15 NAELA Quarterly 17-21(Fall 2002)
• Chapter author, "Pain Management:  A Practical Guide for Clinicians," American Academy of Pain Management, Sixth Edition (2002)
• A New Risk Emerges:  Provider Accountability for Inadequate Treatment of Pain, 9 Annals of Long-Term Care 52-56 (2001)
• Medical Board Corrective Action With Physicians Who Fail to Provide Adequate Pain Care, 87 J. Med. Licensure and Discipline 130-131 (2001)
• Pain Control:  Deceptive Placebo Administration 101 American Journal of Nursing 55-56 (August 2001)
• Improving Pain Care:  A Safe Harbor is Not Enough, 11 Health Law 15 (1999)
• Treatment of Pain in Dying Patients, 338 New England Journal of Medicine 1231 (1998); 339 New England Journal of Medicine 705 (1998)
• The Death with Dignity Movement:  Protecting Rights and Expanding Options after Glucksberg and Quill, 82 Minnesota Law Review 923 (1998)
• Socially Assisted Dying, 7 Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy 350-358 (1998)
• Surrogate End of Life Decision Making:  The Importance of Providing Procedural Due Process, A Case Review, 72 Wash. L. Rev. 859 (July 1997)
• Constitutionally Permissible Regulation of Physician-Assisted Suicide Under the Undue Burden Standard, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly (Spring 1997)
• Is Physician Aid in Dying a Constitutional Right? Journal of Pharmaceutical Care in Pain & Symptom Control (1996)
• Physician Aid in Dying:  A Humane Option, A Constitutionally Protected Choice, 18 Seattle University Law Review 495 (1995)