Education

• Millersville University of Pennsylvania B.A. 1997
• Georgetown University M.S. 1999
• University of Pennsylvania Law School J.D. 2003
• University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Comm. Ph.D. 2007

Courses

• Law and Medicine (B619)
• Reproduction, Childhood and the Law (B529)
• Seminar in Law and Medicine (L796)
• Torts (B531)

Background

• Earned her J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law; elected to the Order of the Coif; and served as Senior Articles Editor for the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law
• Clerk, Hon. Richard D. Cudahy, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Chicago (2004-2005)
• Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law, Harvard University (2005-2007)
• Research Associate, Capital Punishment Research Initiative, University of Albany School of Criminal Justice
• Recipient, Federalist Society Searle Young Legal Scholars Research Fellowship, 2011-12
• Recipient, Indiana University Trustees' Teaching Award, 2015
• “Shooting Blanks: What Happens When Law Can’t Keep Up With Technology” (TEDx Zurich, December 2020)
• Recipient, Indiana University Leon Wallace Teaching Award, 2022
• Author, coauthor, or editor of 5 published and forthcoming books:
  • Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure (NYU Press, 2012)
  • Taking Baby Steps: How Patients and Fertility Clinics Collaborate in Conception (California UP, 2018)
  • The Edward Elgar Research Handbook of Law and Emotion (Edward Elgar, 2021)
  • Indiana Personal Injury Law Treatise (Lexis Nexis, 2023)
  • The Second Amendment: Gun Rights and Regulation (co-edited with Jacob D. Charles, Joseph Blocher, and Darrell Miller) (Foundation Press, forthcoming)

Biography

Professor Madeira joined the Indiana Law faculty in 2007. She is an internationally recognized expert in fertility fraud, bioethics, and law and medicine, with a focus on reproductive endocrinology. Her research has received profiled in national and international media, including the Netflix documentary “Our Father” (2022) to TED to investigative news programs like “20/20” (2019). Her research interests involve empirical research; the role of emotion in law; the sociology of law; law, medicine, and bioethics; and the Second Amendment.

Madeira is the author, coauthor, or editor of dozens of scholarly articles and three published book and two forthcoming titles, including the forthcoming Indiana Personal Injury Law Treatise (forthcoming 2023) and a forthcoming casebook, The Second Amendment: Gun Rights and Regulation (co-edited with Jacob D. Charles, Joseph Blocher, and Darrell Miller) (Foundation Press, forthcoming)

Most recently, she co-edited The Edward Elgar Research Handbook of Law and Emotion (Edward Elgar, 2021).

Her second book, Taking Baby Steps: How Patients and Fertility Clinics Collaborate in Conception (University of California Press, 2018), takes readers inside the infertility experience, from dealing with infertility-related emotions to forming treatment relationships with medical professionals, confronting difficult decisions, and negotiating informed consent. Based on a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data (130 patient interviews, 83 interviews with reproductive medical professionals, and 267 patient surveys), Madeira investigates how women, men, and their care providers can utilize trust to collaboratively negotiate infertility’s personal, physical, spiritual, ethical,  medical, and legal minefields.  

Madeira’s first book, Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure, applies collective memory to criminal prosecution and sentencing, exploring the ways in which victims' families and survivors came to comprehend and cope with the Oklahoma City bombing through membership in community groups as well as through attending and participating in Timothy McVeigh's trial and execution.

Madeira also specializes in assessing how multimedia technology can improve patient education and decision making. She is principal investigator on a grant (with Dr. Basia Andraka-Christou) to design and implement S.U.N., a multimedia web portal integrating educational videos and a mobile health tracking application for college students that addresses alcohol, marijuana, opioid, and stimulant use disorders. In addition, she is involved in assessing the efficacy of commercially available applications in reproductive medicine, gastroenterology, and other areas of medical practice.

Finally, Madeira is currently involved in a research project assessing how Americans talk about firearms and associated benefits, risks, rights, and regulations, especially how doctor-patient discussions of firearm ownership and access impact treatment relationships and the provision of medical care across practice fields. In prior publications, Madeira has investigated a wide variety of topics, including the effects of legal proceedings, verdicts, and sentences upon victims' families; the role of empathy in personal injury litigation; law and semiotics; and the impact of recent developments in capital victims' services upon the relationship between victims' families and the criminal justice system.

After graduating from law school and completing her Ph.D. coursework, Professor Madeira clerked for the Hon. Richard D. Cudahy at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She then came to Harvard as a Climenko Fellow and lecturer in law, where she taught legal research and writing as well as a seminar on the cultural life of capital punishment. Madeira also recently served as a research associate at the Capital Punishment Research Initiative at the School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York.

Selected works

• A Secret Weapon?: Applying Privacy Doctrine to the Second Amendment, 46 HASTINGS CONSTITUTIONAL LAW QUARTERLY 555 (2019).
• Uncommon Misconceptions: Holding Physicians Accountable for Insemination Fraud, 37 LAW & INEQUALITY 45 (2019).
• TAKING BABY STEPS: HOW PATIENTS AND FERTILITY CLINICS COLLABORATE IN CONCEPTION. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018.
• Against Seminal Principles: Ethics, Hubris, and Lessons to Learn from Illicit Inseminations(with Steven R. Lindheim and Mark V. Sauer), 110 FERTILITY AND STERILITY 1003 (Nov. 2018).
• Informed Consent: More than Just "Sign Here"(with Kathryn Coyne, et.al.), 108 FERTILITY AND STERILITY 40 (July 2017).
• Buyers in the Baby Market: Toward a Transparent Consumerism(with June Carbone), 91 WASHINGTON LAW REVIEW 71 (2016)
• Jody Lyneé Madeira, “The Ghosts in the Machinery of Death: The Rhetoric of Mistake in Lethal Injection Reform,” in Law's Mistakes (Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas & Martha Umphrey eds., University of Massachusetts Press) (2016)
• Jody Lyneé Madeira, Laying bin Laden to Rest, in The In/Visibility of America's 21st Century Wars (Jon Simons and John Lucaites eds.) (2016)
• June Carbone & Jody Lyneé Madeira, The Acceptability of Surrogacy, Washington Law Review Online (Spring 2015)
• Jody Lyneé Madeira, Conceiving of Products and the Products of Conception: Theoretical Reflections on Commodification, Consumption, ART, and Abortion, ____ J. of Law, Medicine & Ethics ___ (May 2015)
• Nicole K. Smith, Jody Madeira, & Heather Millard, Sexual Function and Fertility Quality of Life in Women Using In Vitro Fertilization, Journal of Sexual Medicine (2015)
• Jeanna M. Mastrocinque, Jed W. Metzger, Jody Madeira, Kay Lang, Heather Pruss, Peter K. Navratil, Marla Sandys, & Catherine Cerulli, I'm Still Left Here With the Pain: Exploring the Health Consequences of Homicide on Families and Friends, Homicide Studies (June 2014)
• Aborted Emotions: Regret and Relationality, 21 Mich. J. Gender & L. 1 (2014).
• Clear and Ever-Present Dangers? Redefining “Closure” in a Post-9-11 World, Capital Punishment: Part of a Sustainable Criminal Justice System? (Lill Scherdin ed., Ashgate Press, 2014)
• KILLING McVEIGH: THE DEATH PENALTY AND THE MYTH OF CLOSURE (NYU Press, June 2012)
• "Woman Scorned?: Resurrecting Infertile Women's Decision-Making Autonomy," 71 MD. L. REV. 339 (2012)
• "The Family Capital of Capital Families: Investigating Empathic Connections Between Jurors and Defendants' Families in Death Penalty Cases" ___ MICH. ST. L. REV. (2012).
• "The Visibly Offensive Offender: A Semiotic Phenomenology of an Execution," LAW, CULTURE, AND VISUAL STUDIES (Richard Sherwin & Anne Wagner eds.) (Springer, 2012).
• "Conceivable Changes: Effectuating Infertile Couples' Emotional Ties to Frozen Embryos Through New Disposition Options," 79 U. MO. KANSAS CITY L. REV. 315 (2010) (invited contribution to the Global Issues in Family Law Symposium at University of Missouri, Kansas City Law School).
• "Why Rebottle the Genie?": Capitalizing on 'Closure' in the Capital Punishment Context, 85 IND. L. J. 1477 (2010).
• When It's So Hard to Relate: Can the Legal System Mitigate the Trauma of Victim-Offender Relationships?, 46 HOUSTON L. REV. 401 (2009)
• Blood Relations: Collective Memory, Cultural Trauma, and the Prosecution and Execution of Timothy McVeigh, 45 STUDIES IN LAW, POLITICS AND SOCIETY 75 (2008)
• Recognizing Odysseus' Scar: Reconceptualizing Pain and Its Empathic Role in Civil Adjudication, 34 FLA. ST. U. L. REV. 41 (2006)
• Lashing Reason to the Mast: Understanding Judicial Constraints on Emotion in Personal Injury Litigation, 40 UC DAVIS L. REV. 137 (2006)
• Pained Sympathy for Sympathy Pains: The Reasoned Morality of Empathy in Adjudicating Suffering, 58 S.C. L. REV. 415 (2006)
• The Execution as Sacrifice, in EVIL, LAW, AND THE STATE: PERSPECTIVES ON STATE POWER AND VIOLENCE (John T. Parry, ed., 2006)
• A Constructed Peace: Narratives of Suture in the News Media, CANADIAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY 19:2 (2004) (peer-reviewed)

Interests

• Tort law
• Criminal law
• Children and the law
• Assisted reproductive technology
• Interdisciplinary perspectives

Related links

• Publications
• SSRN
• ORCID

Areas of expertise

• Assisted reproductive technology
• Children and the law
• Health law
• Second Amendment
• Torts