Jessica Wilen Berg
Jessica Wilen Berg is an American attorney who specializes in bioethics and public health law. She is the Dean and a Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis School of Law.
Before joining UC Davis, Berg was the co-Dean at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and she was the first woman to hold a dean or co-dean role there in the school’s 129-year history. She is also an author of reference books on informed consent, and her views on the ethics of new biomedical procedures are often cited by institutions and the media.
Education and early work: Berg earned a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University in 1991 and a Juris Doctor from Cornell Law School in 1994. She held fellowships at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy and at the UVA Center for Biomedical Ethics in 1994, and she was a Scholar in Excellence at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1995–1996. She later earned a Master of Public Health from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 2009.
Academic career: Berg joined Case Western Reserve University School of Law as an assistant professor in 1999, became an associate professor in 2003, and has been a professor of law, bioethics, and public health since 2005. She has held the Tom J.E. and Bette Lou Walker Professor of Law chair since 2014. She also served as the associate director of the Institute for Global Security Law & Policy (2006–2007) and the Law-Medicine Center (2006–2014), and she has been co-Dean of the law school since 2013.
Other roles and honors: Berg directed Academic Affairs and contributed to Healthcare Organizational Ethics for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. She served as Secretary of the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs for the American Medical Association. In 2006, she was part of a major NIH grant with Max Mehlman to develop guidelines for the use of human subjects in genetic research. She was named Health Policy Researcher of the Year by the Health Policy Institute of Ohio in 2008 and received Case Western Reserve University’s Mather Spotlight Award for Excellence in Research in 2009.
Her work continues to influence discussions about the ethics of new biomedical technologies.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 20:24 (CET).