James Blumstein

Jim Blumstein ranks among the nation’s most prominent scholars of health law, law and medicine, and voting rights. He is currently one of 13 University Professors at Vanderbilt; he was the first awarded that title in the law school and the first to receive a second tenured appointment in Vanderbilt Medical School. The director of Vanderbilt’s Health Policy Center, Blumstein has served as the principal investigator on numerous grants concerning managed care, hospital management and medical malpractice. His peers recognized his leadership in health law and policy by electing Blumstein to the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, and he was awarded the Earl Sutherland Prize, which is Vanderbilt’s preeminent university-wide recognition for lifetime scholarly contributions. In 2007, he received the prestigious McDonald-Merrill-Ketcham Memorial Award for Excellence in Law and Medicine from the University of Indiana and delivered the award lecture on hospital-physician joint-venture relationships.

Blumstein has served as former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen’s counsel on TennCare reform and has participated actively in a number of Supreme Court cases, arguing three. In 2014, Professor Blumstein received a secondary appointment as a Professor of Management at the Owen Graduate School of Management. A dedicated teacher, Professor Blumstein has received the law school’s student-sponsored Hall-Hartman Teaching Award. He joined Vanderbilt’s law faculty in 1970.