O. C. Snead

Associate Professor of Law

Office Number: 311 Law School
Telephone: 574.631.8259
Fax: 574.631.4197
Email: snead.1@nd.edu
Staff Assistant:
Ann McGuigan Jones

Professor Snead joins the faculty as an associate professor of law. In 1996, he received his B.A. from St. Johns College and his J.D. magna cum laude from Georgetown University in 1999, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and associate editor for American Criminal Law Review. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Paul J. Kelly, Jr., United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He then practiced with Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering and with Ropes and Gray, both in Washington, D.C. In late 2002, he accepted the position of General Counsel for the President’s Council on Bioethics (a White House advisory committee). As General Counsel, Professor Snead advised the Chairman and Council members on the legal and public policy dimensions of numerous ethical questions arising from advances in biomedical science and biotechnology. He was the principal drafter of the Council’s 2004 report, “Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies,” a comprehensive critical assessment of the governance (both public and private) of the activities at the intersection of assisted reproduction, human embryo research, and genetics. Professor Snead continues to serve the Council as an Expert Consultant. From 2004-2005, he served as the chief negotiator and head of the United States delegation to UNESCO for the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (adopted in October 2005). Professor Snead was recently listed in UNESCO’s Global Ethics Observatory, a worldwide directory of experts on bioethics, environmental ethics, science ethics and technology ethics.

In 2007, Professor Snead was appointed (along with Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, Chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics) to be the Permanent Observer for the U.S. Government at the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBI). In that capacity, Professor Snead assists the CDBI in its efforts to elaborate international instruments and standards for the ethical governance of science and medicine.

In 2008, the Director-General of UNESCO appointed Professor Snead to a four-year term on the International Bioethics Committee (IBC), a 36-member body of independent experts that advises member states on bioethics, law, and public policy. The IBC is the only forum in the UN system expressly charged with this responsibility.

Professor Snead’s research focuses on the intersection of law and bioethics. His scholarship explores the possibility, mechanisms, and wisdom of the governance of science, medicine, and biotechnology according to ethical principles.

LAW60901, Torts

LAW70359, Constitutional Criminal Procedure

LAW73828, Bioethics and the Law Seminar

Faculty Expertise Areas

• Bioethics
• Constitutional law
• Criminal law and procedure
• Law, science and medicine

Articles

Neuroimaging and the ‘Complexity’ of Capital Punishment, 82 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1265-1339 (2007).

Unenumerated Rights and the Limits of Analogy: A Critique of the Right to Medical Self-Defense, 121 Harv. L. Rev. F. 1-12 (2007). (Responding to Eugene Volokh, Medical Self-Defense, Prohibited Experimental Therapies, and Payment for Organs, 120 Harvard L. Rev. 1813 (2007).)

A Review of Helena Silverstein’s How Courts Fail Pregnant Minors (NYU Press 2007)), _ Political Science Quarterly _ (forthcoming Spring 2008) (peer reviewed) (invited submission).

Neuroimaging, Entrapment, and the Predisposition to Crime, 7 American J. of Bioethics 60-61 (2007), (Invited Peer Commentary).

Assessing UNESCO’s Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights, _ National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly _ (forthcoming Winter 2006-07)

Il finanziamento delle ricerche sulle cellule staminali in Europa e negli USA (A Comparative Analysis of E.U. and U.S. Funding Policies for Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Details, Aims, and Effects), 4 Quaderni Costituzionale 834 (2006) (translated from English to Italian by Prof. Stefania Ninatti) )

The (Suprising) Truth about Schiavo: A Defeat for the Cause of Autonomy, 22 Const. Comm. 101 (2006) (reprinted in Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. (ed.), Life and Learning XVI (2006)).

The Pedagogical Significance of the Bush Stem Cell Policy: A Window into the Nature of Bioethical Regulation in the U.S., 5 Yale J. Health Pol’y, L. & Ethics 491 (2005) (peer reviewed) (invited submission) (reprinted in Judith F. Daar, Reproductive Technologies and the Law (Lexis 2005)).

Dynamic Complementarity: Terri’s Law and Separation of Powers Principles in the End-of-Life Context, 57 Fla. L. Rev. 53 (2005).

Preparing the Groundwork for a Responsible Debate on Stem Cell Research and Cloning, 39 New Eng. L. Rev. 701 (2005) (Keynote address for 2004 Symposium, “Bioethics: The Current Stem Cell Research Debate”) (to be reprinted in Anila V. Menon, Legal and Ethical Aspects of Cloning (ICFAI Books 2006)).

Technology and the Constitution, 5 The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society 61 (Spring 2004).

Federal Criminal Conspiracy, 35 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 739 (1998) (Co-Author).