Ruqaiijah Yearby, Esq., M.P.H.

Associate Dean of Institutional Diversity and Inclusiveness and Professor of Law, Associate Director of the Law-Medicine Center, Oliver C. Schroeder Jr. Distinguished Research Scholar

Ruqaiijah A. Yearby is the Oliver C. Schroeder Jr. Distinguished Research Scholar, Professor of Law, and Associate Director of the Law-Medicine Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. A nationally and internationally recognized scholar and presenter, Yearby’s scholarship focuses on two emerging fields of health law: 1) racial disparities in health care and 2) law, justice and medical research. She recently presented her work on law, justice and medical research at the Oxford Global Health and Bioethics International Conference in Oxford, England.

Due to her expertise in these areas, she has served as a book proposal reviewer for Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press, as well as a grant reviewer for the Wellcome Trust (the United Kingdom’s largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research). Her scholarship has also been used in law and social science classes at schools such as NYU, Fordham, and University of California Berkeley.

During her time in legal academia, she has published numerous law review articles, three book chapters, one editorial (reprinted in USA Today Magazine), and submitted written legislative testimony. Her work has been cited in The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics (2007), Health Care Law and Ethics, (6th 2008), Implicit Racial Bias Across the Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2012) and the United States Code Annotated. Her article, “Striving for Equality, But Settling for the Status Quo in Health Care: Is Title VI More Illusory Than Real?,” 59 Rutgers L. Rev. 429-496 (2007), is cited under Law Review Commentaries in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000d), and in written testimony submitted to the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law (Dec. 16, 2009).

While earning her Bachelors of Science in Honors Biology from the University of Michigan, Yearby wrote a thesis on plant biotechnology and served as a Research Assistant at the University of Natal in South Africa. In 2000, Yearby earned her Master of Public Health in Health Policy & Management from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was on the Dean’s List. After law school, she worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as an Assistant Regional Counsel and served as a law clerk for the Honorable Ann Claire Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.