Just a quick note here as most of us are getting ready for the first day of classes for the 2025-26 academic year.  This year, I have the great privilege of working with University of Ottawa Law Professor Vanessa Gruben to offer a new, collaborative seminar course for U.S. and Canadian students.  The course heading of “Health Law, Policy and Ethics in an Aging World,” will allow our students to explore a wide range of topics where law and public policies may diverge. 

In fact, just today I read a fact that surprised me.  New York Times opinion writer David French examines “What It Really Means to Choose Life.”   He reports on a statistic I did not know until today, that Canada’s program supporting Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) accounts for one in 20 deaths in Canada — more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined.  The details for why and how this can be true will undoubtedly give people on either side of our borders opportunities to talk seriously.

We are using a research handbook on “Law. Society and Ageing”  published in 2024 by Edward Elgar and edited by U.K.’s Sue Westwood and USA’s Nancy Knauer as our textbook for the course.  This is a new opportunity with digital access that allow the short chapters that are grouped by topic to be used as springboards for further research.  

I look forward to providing interim progress reports on the course experience, which is inspired by last year’s experience as a Fulbright Fellow based at the University of Ottawa School of Law.  

Photo of Katherine C. Pearson Katherine C. Pearson

Katherine C. Pearson is a Professor of Law and the Arthur L. and Sandra S. Piccone Faculty Scholar at Penn State Dickinson Law in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Her scholarship focuses on laws and policies connected to aging and she has frequently included age-related issues…

Katherine C. Pearson is a Professor of Law and the Arthur L. and Sandra S. Piccone Faculty Scholar at Penn State Dickinson Law in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Her scholarship focuses on laws and policies connected to aging and she has frequently included age-related issues in her teaching of courses on contract law, conflicts of law and nonprofit organizations law.  She is a regular speaker for continuing education programs, both for consumers and lawyers, to address cutting edge concerns in consumer protection for older adults.  She is the author of articles and chapters on access to justice, senior living options including continuing care and life plan communities, long-term care financing and filial obligations, and is the co-author of a treatise, The Law of Financial Abuse and Exploitation (Bisel 2011).

She authored chapters for the Research Handbook on Law, Society and Ageing, published in 2024 as part of a series on law and society handbooks offered by international publisher Edward Elgar. She is a 2024-2025 Fulbright Scholar in Canada and was in residence at the University of Ottawa in the Fall of 2024 as the Research Chair in Health Law, Policy and Ethics.  Her earlier experience as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar (based at the Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, and working in Ireland, Portugal, and the U.K. in 2009-10), resulted in publications, including an article with an international, historical perspective on ethical concerns for attorneys representing older adults, entitled “The Lesson of the Irish Family Pub,” published by Stetson Law Review.

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