In the Spotlight


Prof Jennifer Oliva

Faculty Feature - Meet Professor Jennifer Oliva


Professor Jennifer Oliva joined the Law School in July 2019. She comes to Seton Hall Law from West Virginia School of Law. She is a legal expert in health, FDA, and evidence law. A graduate of the United States Military Academy, she was elected as a Rhodes and Truman Scholar and was recently selected as the 2019 Ike Skelton Award Winner by the Truman Scholarship Foundation and a 2019 Weit Life Science Law Scholar. Professor Oliva is the 2019- 2020 Chair-Elect of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Law and Mental Disability.

Healthcare and evidence law can both be very “dynamic and complex,” according to Professor Oliva. She focuses her research on laws and policies that obstruct access to mental health and substance use disorder treatment for vulnerable populations, health data privacy, veteran health, unreliable ‘scientific’ evidence, and the procedural and substantive problems infecting mass tort public health litigation. “As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, ‘the first wealth is health’ and, in the United States, our population health statistics prove that wealth often dictates health-related outcomes. My goal is to work with Seton Hall Law’s world-class health law team to develop highly-qualified, creative, and thoughtful healthcare lawyers who will well-serve the nation as healthcare law and policy thought leaders in the years to come.”