Kahn, Dr. Jonathan

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Kahn, Dr. Jonathan

Professor
Email: jkahn01@hamline.edu
Phone: 651-523-2648
J.D., University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law
Ph.D., Cornell University

"Law is a powerful tool to shape society and serve the common good. In training new lawyers it is important to impart not only an understanding of what the legal system demands of them, but also a commitment to figure out what they should demand of the legal system."

View Dr. Kahn's research: SSRN Author Page -- Dr. Jonathan Kahn

Holding a Ph.D. in History from Cornell University and a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law, Dr. Jonathan Kahn writes on issues in history, politics, and law and specializes in biotechnology's implications for our ideas of identity, rights, and citizenship, with a particular focus on race and justice. He teaches in areas of Constitutional Law, Torts, Health Law and Biotethics.

In 2007, Dr. Kahn received a grant from National Human Genome Research Institute's (NHGRI) Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program to support a two year project in which he explored the ethical and legal ramifications of the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in the context of gene patenting and drug development. Dr. Kahn is an internationally recognized expert on this topic. His scholarly research and writing related to the legal and ethical implications of how racial categories are produced and disseminated in the course of drug development are widely published, including the article "Race in a Bottle" in the August 2007 issue of Scientific American. The article pertains to BiDil, the first medication ever approved by the FDA to be targeted to a specific racial group. An exhibit quoting Dr. Kahn on this topic also is part of the nationally touring museum exhibit, "RACE – Are We So Different?" a project of American Anthropological Association and funded by the Ford Foundation & National Science Foundation.

Dr. Kahn has been published in a wide array of journals ranging from the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics, Seton Hall Law Review, and the Stanford Law & Policy Journal to the American Journal of Bioethics, the American Journal of Public Health, and Nature Genetics. He has also published a book titled, "Budgeting Democracy: State-Building and Citizenship in America, 1890-1928" (Cornell U. Press, 1997). His previous grants include a major grant from the National Institutes of Health to support a project titled, "Colliding Categories: Haplotypes, Race, and Ethnicity."

Before coming to Hamline, Dr. Kahn practiced with the firm of Hogan & Hartson after graduating from law school and then went on to complete his Ph.D. and teach at Bard College. Later, he served as a Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard University and has also taught at the University of Minnesota, Cornell University School of Law and Western New England School of Law.

Publications

Race No Longer a Relevant Element in DNA Trial Evidence, 24 CRIM.JUST. 39 (2009).
LegalTrac (Hamline Users)LegalTrac

Race and Ancestry in Biomedical Research: Exploring the Challenges, 1 GENOME MED. 8 (2009).
  PDF

Race, Genes and Justice: A Call to Reform the Presentation of Forensic DNA Evidence in Criminal Trials, 74 BROOK. L. REV. 325 (2009).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline

Fundamental Flaws in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Rationale for Supporting the Development and Approval of BiDil® as a Treatment for Heart Failure in Black Patients, 36 J. L. MED. & ETHICS 449 (2008)(with G. Ellison, J. Kaufman, and R. Head).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline

Inventing Race as a Genetic Commodity in Biotechnology Patents, in BAGIOLI, M., ET AL. ED. CONTEXTS OF INVENTION: CREATIVE PRODUCTION IN LEGAL AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE (2008).

Patenting Race in a Genomic Age, in BAGIOLI, M., ET AL. ED. CONTEXTS OF INVENTION: CREATIVE PRODUCTION IN LEGAL AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE (2008).

The Science and Business of Genetic Ancestry Testing, SCIENCE (Oct. 19, 2007)(with others).

Race-ing Patents/Patenting Race: An Emerging Political Geography of Intellectual Property in Biotechnology, 92 IOWA L. REV. 353 (2007).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline

Genes, Race, and Population: Avoiding a Collision of Categories, 96 AM. J. PUB. HEALTH 6 (2006).
  Westlaw

Race, Pharmacogenomics, and Marketing: Putting BiDil in Context, 6 AM. J. BIOETHICS w1, DOI: 10.1080/15265160600755789 (Sept./Oct. 2006).

Exploiting Race in Drug Development: BiDil’s Interim Model of Pharmacogenomics, 38 SOC. STUD. SCI. 737 (2006).
Sage Journals

Surrogate Markers and Surrogate Marketing in Biomedicine: The Regulatory Etiology and Commercial Progression of "Ethnic" Drug D, in BIOMEDICALIZATION (A. Clarke, et al., eds., 2006).

Abe Fortas, in THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES (Paul Finkelman, ed., 2006).

Being Specific about Race-Specific Medicine, 25 HEALTH AFFAIRS 375 (Sept/Oct 2006) (with Pamela Shankar).
Academic Search Premier

Rights and Practical Access to Medicine, 84 BULL. WORLD HEALTH ORG. 409 (May 2006).

Harmonizing Race: Competing Regulatory Paradigms of Racial Categorization in International Drug Development, 5 SANTA CLARA J. INT’L L. 1 (2006).
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Patenting Race, 24 NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY 1349 (2006).

From Disparity to Difference: How Race-Specific Medicines May Undermine Policies to Address Inequalities in Health Care, 15 S. CAL. INTERDISC. L.J. 105 (2005).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline

Controlling Identity: Plessy, Privacy, and Racial Defamation, 54 DEPAUL L. REV. 755 (2005).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline PDF

How a Drug Becomes ‘Ethnic’: Law, Commerce, and the Production of Racial Categories in Medicine, 4 YALE J. HEALTH POL’Y L. & ETHICS 1 (2004).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline

Getting the Numbers Right: Statistical Mischief and Racial Profiling in Heart Failure Research, 46 PERSP. BIOLOGY & MED. 473 (2003); reprinted in HEALTH AND HEALING IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE (Elizabeth D. Whitaker, ed., 2006).
Project Muse

What's the Use? Law and Authority in Patenting Human Genetic Material, 14 STANFORD L. & POL. REV. 417 (2003).
Lexis Westlaw PDF

Privacy as a Legal Principle of Identity Maintenance, 33 SETON HALL L. REV. 371 (2003).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline PDF

Product Liability and the Politics of Corporate Presence: Identity and Accountability in MacPherson v. Buick, 35 LOY. L.A. L. REV. 3 (2001).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline PDF

What’s in a Name? Law’s Identity under the Tort of Appropriation, 74 TEMP. L. REV. 263 (2001).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline PDF

Biotechnology and the Legal Constitution of the Self: Managing Identity in Science, the Market, and Society, 51 HASTINGS L.J. 909 (2000).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline

Bringing Dignity Back to Light: Publicity Rights and the Eclipse of the Tort of Appropriation of Identity, 17 CARDOZO ARTS & ENT. L.J. 213 (1999).
Lexis Westlaw HeinOnline(Hamline Users) HeinOnline PDF

BUDGETING DEMOCRACY: STATE-BUILDING AND CITIZENSHIP IN AMERICA, (1890-1928) (1997).

Enslaving the Image: The Origins of the Tort of Appropriation of Identity Reconsidered, 2 LEGAL THEORY 301 (1996).Available in Hamline Law Library Periodicals Collection

Abe Fortas, in THE SUPREME COURT JUSTICES: A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY (Melvyn Urofsky, ed., 1994).

Re-Presenting Government and Representing the People: Budget Publicity and Citizenship in New York City, 1908-1911, 19 J. URB. HIST. 84 (1993).
Sage Journals