Professor of Law
B.A., The College of William and Mary
J.D., Fordham University School of Law
E-mail:
jgculhane@widener.edu Phone: 302.477.2107
John G. Culhane received his B.A. in Philosophy from The College of William and Mary, and his J.D. from Fordham Law School, where he was an associate editor of the Fordham Law Review. After clerking for the Hon. Joseph M. McLaughlin in federal district court, Professor Culhane was an associate with the firm of Cahill, Gordon and Reindel in New York City. He then spent one year at the University of Chicago, as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law before joining the Widener faculty in 1987. He is Professor of Law at Widener University School of Law and Director of the nationally ranked Health Law Institute. He also holds the title of Lecturer at the Yale University School of Public Health.
Professor Culhane has written more than two dozen articles for legal journals on a wide range of topics: the rights of same-sex couples, including articles on marriage equality and on the tort law's treatment of relational interests between such couples; public health issues, including gun policy (with colleague Jean Eggen) domestic and international HIV issues and vaccine policy; and tort law, including product liability, educational malpractice, and compensation for victims of mass disasters. He is currently editing and contributing to a book on the public health dimensions of charged political topics, including: reproductive rights; marriage equality (his chapter); racial justice and equity; gun policy; domestic violence; death and dying; and tort law and punitive damages.
Speaking on these topics and others, Professor Culhane has also been regularly featured in national and local broadcast and print media, including National Public Radio, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dissent, and WHYY television and radio. Most recently, Professor Culhane has written and spoken extensively on the government’s responsibility, and victims’ rights, in connection with the attacks of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina. He is featured in a 2008 documentary about these and related issues, entitled “America Betrayed,” from Eclipse Entertainment. The film is narrated by Academy Award winning actor Richard Dreyfuss and features interviews with dozens of prominent politicians, noted scientists, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists.
Working with Widener students, the National Institutes of Health (and the National Library of Medicine), and the Delaware Academy of Medicine, Professor Culhane is directing the Public Health Law Information Project, which is creating a database of searchable public health-law related information, using the State of Delaware as the pilot.
Professor Culhane has won three Outstanding Faculty awards (in 1991, 2000, and 2003), and was also the first to receive the Douglas A. Ray award for Distinguished Scholarship in 2005.
Professor Culhane lives in the Powelton Village section of Philadelphia with his partner, David, and their twin daughters, Courtnee and Alexa.
Selected Recent Publications
Articles
- Beyond Rights and Morality: The Overlooked Public Health Argument for Same-Sex Marriage, 17 J. L. & Sexuality 7 (2008).
- What Does Justice Require for the Victims of Katrina and September 11?, 10 DePaul J. Health Care Law 179 (2007).
- The Gay Marriage Backlash and its Spillover Effects: Lessons from a (Slightly) “Blue State,” (with Stacey L. Sobel), 40 Tulsa L. Rev. 443 (2005), in SYMPOSIUM: THE LEGISLATIVE BACKLASH TO ADVANCES IN RIGHTS FOR SAME-SEX COUPLES.
- “Lawrence-ium”: The Densest Known Substance?, 11 Widener L. Rev. 259 (2005), in SYMPOSIUM: READINGS OF LAWRENCE V. TEXAS.
- Bad Science, Worse Policy: The Exclusion of Gay Males from Donor Pools, 24 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 129 (2005), in
SYMPOSIUM: OUT OF THE CLOSET AND INTO THE LIGHT: THE LEGAL ISSUES OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION.
Other
- Sandbags Full of Money: Victim Compensation After 9/11, Dissent, Fall 2003, at 40.
- & Jean Macchiaroli Eggen, Gun Makers Seek to Bar Justice, Sun. News J. (Wilmington, DE), June 22, 2003, at A15.