Osagie K. Obasogie, Associate Professor of Law

Professor Obasogie's research attempts to bridge the conceptual and methodological gaps between empirical and doctrinal scholarship on race. This effort can be seen in his recent work that asks: how do blind people understand race? By engaging in qualitative research with individuals who have been totally blind since birth, this project provides an empirical basis from which to rethink core assumptions embedded in social and legal understandings of race. His first article from this project won the Law & Society Association’s John Hope Franklin Prize in addition to being named runner-up for the Distinguished Article Award by the Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association.  This research provides the basis for Professor Obasogie’s first book, Blinded By Sight, which is forthcoming with Stanford University Press.

His scholarship also looks at the past and present roles of science in both constructing racial meanings and explaining racial disparities. This is tied to his interest in bioethics, particularly the social, ethical, and legal implications of reproductive and genetic technologies. Obasogie’s second book, Beyond Bioethics: Towards a New Biopolitics (with Marcy Darnovsky) is currently under contract with the University of California Press.

In addition to his work at Hastings, Professor Obasogie has a joint appointment with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Genetics and Society. He is an affiliated faculty member with the Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program at UCSF and UC Berkeley and is also on the Board of Trustees for the Law & Society Association.

Professor Obasogie's writings span both academic and public audiences, with journal articles in the Law & Society Review, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming), Stanford Technology Law Review (forthcoming), Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics along with commentaries in outlets such as Slate, the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and New Scientist.

Education: Yale University, B.A. (with distinction); Columbia Law School, J.D. (Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar); University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. (National Science Foundation Fellow)

Courses Taught: Constitutional Law; Bioethics; Social, Ethical, and Legal Implications of Reproductive and Genetic Technologies

Hastings offers you the following unique opportunities... With the emerging UCSF/Hastings Consortium on Law, Science, and Health Policy, Hastings is quickly becoming a leader in thinking about the many ways in which science and medicine will impact law in the 21^st century.