Jennifer D. Oliva

Jennifer D. Oliva is the Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development and Director of the Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law at Seton Hall Law where she specializes in health law and policy, FDA law, drug policy, privacy law, evidence, and complex litigation. She also serves as Senior Scholar with the O’Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law at Georgetown Law and on the National Pain Advocacy Center’s Science and Policy Advisory Council. An honors graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, Professor Oliva was a Public Interest Law Scholar and served as Executive Notes & Comments Editor of The Georgetown Law Journal. Prior to attending law school, Professor Oliva earned a Masters in Business Administration at the University of Oxford. She was elected as a Rhodes and Truman Scholar while a cadet at the United States Military Academy. After law school, Professor Oliva served as a federal appellate law clerk to the Honorable Stephanie K. Seymour on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the Honorable Thomas L. Ambro on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She was subsequently appointed Deputy State Solicitor of the State of Delaware by then-Attorney General Beau Biden.

Professor Oliva has worked in the appellate and health/FDA law practice groups at national law firms and served as the General Counsel and Vice President of a regional behavioral health care company. She is United States Army veteran and admitted to the bar in Delaware, California, and the District of Columbia. She also is admitted to numerous United States district and appellate courts, including the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and the United States Supreme Court. Professor Oliva served as the 2020 Chair of the AALS Section on Law and Mental Disability and she was recently elected as Secretary of the AALS Section on Law, Medicine and Health Care and to the Executive Board of the AALS Section on Biolaw. Professor Oliva was selected as a 2019 Wiet Life Science Law Scholar by the Loyola University Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy, a 2020 Health Law Scholar by the Saint Louis University Center for Health Law Studies and the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, and the recipient of the 2021 Health Law Community Service Award by the AALS Section on Law, Medicine, and Health Care. The Harry S. Truman Foundation honored Professor Oliva with the 2019 Truman Scholarship Foundation Ike Skelton Award for her commitment to public service and the Seton Hall Law student body selected her for the 2021 Paula Franzese Excellence in Teaching (Professor of the Year) Award.

Prior to joining the faculty at Seton Hall Law, Professor Oliva served three years as Associate Professor of Law and Public Health at West Virginia University, where she was selected as the College of Law’s 2017-2018 Professor of the Year and the West Virginia Law Review’s 2017-2018 Professor of the Year. She also spent the Spring 2019 semester as a visiting research scholar at The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Professor Oliva has served as an invited peer reviewer for the American Journal of Public Health, Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics, American Journal of Law & Medicine, Journal of Law and the Biosciences, and Big Data & Society. Her scholarship has been published by or is forthcoming in the California Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, North Carolina Law Review, Washington Law Review, and online companion to the University of Chicago Law Review.

Sub-specialties: health care law & policy (with specialities in public health law, public health policing, rural access to health care issues, substance abuse, behavioral health, and Medicaid), evidence (with specialities in expert and forensic evidence), administrative law, and veterans law & benefits.