FACULTY IN HEALTH LAW

JESSICA L. MANTEL
Director, Health Law & Policy Institute
Associate Professor of Law and George Butler Research Professor

B.A., University of Pennsylvania
J.D., M.P.P., University of Michigan Law School

Jessica L. Mantel is an Associate Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Health Law & Policy Institute. Her research interests include the impact of legislative and regulatory schemes on emerging trends in the health care delivery system, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the allocation of limited health care resources. Her most recent work has focused on how payment reforms impact the physician-patient relationship and cross-sector collaborations to address the social determinants of health. Prior to joining the UH Law Center in 2010, Professor Mantel served as a senior attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. While in government, Professor Mantel worked on a range of Medicare matters, including advising the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on implementation of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, inpatient hospital payments and incentive payments for providers adopting electronic health records. Previously, she was a health analyst at the Government Accountability Office and was an associate in the health care practice at Ropes & Gray.

SETH J. CHANDLER
Law Foundation Professor of Law

A.B., Princeton University
J.D., Harvard University Law School

Seth J. Chandler is a Law Foundation Professor of Law at the UH Law Center who specializes in insurance law and the application of mathematics and computer science to law. Professor Chandler won a prestigious university-wide teaching excellence award in 1995, was a first year winner of the Innovator Award from Wolfram Research, received the President's Medal from Loyola University for extraordinary service in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and has been called on twice to testify before Congress on the Affordable Care Act. Professor Chandler has a broad Internet presence; he is the author of over 100 interactive Demonstrations on the Wolfram Research website. He founded two blogs, acadeathspiral.org, which addressed the ACA, and catrisk.net, which addressed catastrophic insurance in Texas. He is currently a blogger on health care finance issues for Forbes Magazine on its Apothecary site. Professor Chandler's blog entries have over 400,000 views. He is a Visiting Scholar at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. He practiced with Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles and Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C. before beginning his academic career in 1990 at the UH Law Center. Professor Chandler teaches contracts, health law, analytic methods and constitutional law.

Dr. Michael S. Ewer

Distinguished Visiting Professor and Health Law LL.M. Director, Health Law & Policy Institute
Professor of Medicine and Special Assistant to the Vice President, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

B.A., Hunter College
M.D., University of Basel, Switzerland
M.P.H., University of Texas School of Public Health J.D., University of Houston Law Center
LL.M., University of Houston Law Center
Ph.D., University of Texas School of Public Health

Dr. Michael S. Ewer is a Professor of Medicine and an administrator at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he has served for the last 40 years. He is also a faculty member at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Dr. Ewer holds a doctorate degree from The University of Texas and received his J.D. and LL.M. degrees from the University of Houston Law Center. He has broad experience in medical ethics, conflicts of interest and uncompensated (charity) medical care. Dr. Ewer has published extensively in the fields of oncology, medical ethics and philosophy of medical care; has authored four medical texts and is a sought-after international speaker. He teaches hospital law & ethics, HIPAA and foundational issues in health law.

LEAH R. FOWLER
Assistant Professor of Law

B.S., Georgetown University
J.D., University of Houston Law Center
M.P.H., University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Leah Fowler is an Assistant Professor of Law. Her work explores topics at the intersection of consumer technology and health, focusing primarily on smartphone applications and social media platforms. Her scholarship is published or forthcoming in the Georgetown Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, American Journal of Law & Medicine, Pediatrics, Journal of Adolescent Health, Health Promotion Practice, and American Journal of Bioethics, among others. She teaches Contracts and health law courses.

Professor Fowler joined the Law Center in 2018 as a Research Assistant Professor and Research Director in the Health Law & Policy Institute. Prior to UH, Professor Fowler was the Health Policy Program Manager at Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Medical Ethics & Health Policy, where she maintains a designation as a Health Policy Scholar. Immediately after law school, she practiced law as a personal injury attorney.

Erica Patterson
Research Scholar

B.S., University of Maryland, College Park
J.D., Notre Dame Law School
LL.M., Georgetown University Law Center

Erica M. Patterson is a distinguished legal scholar with expertise in national and global health law, economic development, agricultural law, and energy law. She earned her LLM with Distinction from Georgetown University Law Center, where she also completed a Food and Drug Law Certificate. At Georgetown, Erica has made significant contributions as a Global Health Law Scholar and research assistant with the O’Neill Institute Infectious Disease Group.

Her academic credentials include a JD from the University of Notre Dame Law School, where she served as Executive Symposium Editor of the Journal of Legislation and held various leadership roles. Erica's international experience encompasses studies at the University of Lucerne, focusing on human rights, global poverty, and agricultural law, and work with esteemed organizations like the Environmental Working Group.

Notably, Erica is both a co-author and author of influential works in her field. She contributed a central chapter on economic development policy and public health advancement to the book Global Health Law & Policy: Ensuring Justice for a Healthier World. Her professional experience includes high-level legal research and analysis with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and various law firms, emphasizing the intersection of economic development and health. Erica continues to advance global health law, agricultural policy, and human rights through her scholarly publications and community service.

NIKOLAS  GUGGENBERGER
Assistant Professor
LL.M., Stanford Law School
J.D.-equivalent, Ph.D., Freiburg University

Nikolas Guggenberger is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. He also holds an appointment at the Cullen College of Engineering’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Guggenberger’s work focuses on antitrust, law & technology, privacy, and regulation. He has frequently advised government entities and served as expert witness on technology policy, financial markets regulation, and media law.

Before joining the University of Houston Law Center, Guggenberger was a Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and Executive Director of the Yale Information Society Project. Guggenberger held an appointment as the RWTÜV Foundation Assistant Professor at the University of Münster School of Law in Germany and taught at the University of Virginia School of Law and the University of São Paulo Law School. He also served as an advisor on banking and financial markets regulation and monetary and economic policy to Jakob von Weizsäcker at the European Parliament in Brussels. He clerked in Freiburg, Germany, and holds degrees from Freiburg University (JD-equivalent & PhD) and Stanford Law School (LLM). Guggenberger is in the first cohort of UH Presidential Frontier Faculty, a university-wide integrated interdisciplinary faculty hiring campaign to respond to federal priorities and societal challenges.

JIM HAWKINS
George Butler Research Professor of Law 

J.D., The University of Texas School of Law
B.A., Baylor University

Jim Hawkins earned his J.D. from The University  of Texas, where he was the Grand Chancellor and served as the Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review. He has published articles in the UCLA Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, the Washington and Lee Law Review, the William and Mary Law Review and the Harvard Journal on Legislation, among other journals. His papers have been selected for the Yale/Stanford/ Harvard Junior Faculty Forum and for the Petrie- Flom Center's annual conference at Harvard Law School.

Professor Hawkins joined the University of Houston Law Center after clerking for The Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and working with the Houston office of Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP. His research and teaching interests include consumer borrowing, the fringe banking industry and the fertility business. His research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and other media outlets.

DAVID KWOK
Assistant Professor of Law

B.S., Northwestern University
M.P.P., University of California, Berkeley
J.D., University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

David Kwok graduated Northwestern University with a B.S. from the McCormick School of Engineering and received his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where he was elected to Order of the Coif. At Berkeley, he also received his Master's Degree in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy and his Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy.

After law school, Professor Kwok clerked for The Honorable John T. Noonan, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Professor Kwok teaches and writes about white collar crime, public policy, and law and the social sciences.

JAMES D. NELSON
Associate Professor of Law and Business

B.A., University of Virginia
J.D., University of Virginia School of Law

James Nelson is Associate Professor of Law and Business at the University of Houston Law Center. He also holds an appointment at the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston. His recent work on corporate law, governance, and rights has been published in the Columbia Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Harvard Business Law Review.

Prior to joining the Law Center, Professor Nelson was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Corporate Governance at Columbia Law School. He has also been a Fellow at the Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership, Research Director of the Project on Corporate Political Spending at Harvard Law School, Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School, and Editor-at-Large of Columbia Law School’s Blog on Corporations and the Capital Markets.

Professor Nelson graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Virginia Law Review. In law school, he received the Roger & Madeleine Traynor Prize for the best paper by a graduating student and the Robert E. Goldsten Award for distinction in the classroom.

LAURA PORTUONDO
Assistant Professor of Law

B.A., Yale University
J.D., Yale Law School

Laura Portuondo is a constitutional law scholar with expertise on reproductive rights and justice, gender equality, and the First Amendment. Her scholarship addresses tensions between First and Fourteenth Amendment law and offers novel theories for reconciling them. Professor Portuondo’s work has been featured in the Duke Law Journal, the UCLA Law Review, the Journal of Law and Religion (peer reviewed), and the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism.

Professor Portuondo earned her J.D. from Yale Law School where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Following law school, she clerked for the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Hon. Jed. S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She also worked as a judicial strategy fellow at the Center for Reproductive Rights and as a Fellow with the Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice at Yale Law School.

APRIL MORENO
Program Director