PFC Spotlight: Student Fellow Alumnus Alexander Boni-Saenz
Alexander Boni-Saenz was a Student Fellow during the 2006-2007 academic year, while in his second year at Harvard Law School. For his Fellowship project, he researched long-term care insurance regulation and how to ensure the market operates efficiently and with sufficient safeguards for consumers. Today, he is Assistant Professor of Law at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.
When did you first become interested in health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics?
My interest in health policy and bioethics derived from my longstanding interest in aging issues, as the two fields share significant conceptual and topical overlap. This is evident in my legal scholarship today, for instance in my latest article, Sexual Advance Directives, 68 Ala. L. Rev. 1 (2016). In it, I use insights from bioethics and the experience of advance directives for health care decision-making to construct a workable regime of advance directives for sexual decision-making among older adults with cognitive impairments.
What attracted you to the Student Fellowship program at the Petrie-Flom Center?
I saw being a student fellow as an opportunity to get involved at the ground level with an exciting new institute at Harvard.
What was the focus of your Student Fellowship project?
My student fellowship research was focused on insurance regulation, specifically on the role of public-private partnerships in said regulatory regimes. My student fellowship paper would eventually become my Note for the Harvard Law Review - Public-Private Partnerships and Insurance Regulation, 121 Harv. L. Rev. 1367 (2008).
How has the Student Fellowship influenced your career?
The student fellowship gave me space to explore writing legal scholarship, and this was of paramount importance in my eventual pursuit of a legal academic career.