Solomon Center Alumni Receive Health Law Scholars Award
Two former fellows of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School — 2023–25 Senior Academic Fellow Yaron Covo and former graduate affiliate Ximena Benavides ’06 LLM, ’22 JSD — have been named 2026 Health Law Scholars by the American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics and the SLU School of Law Center for Health Law Studies.
For 25 years, the Health Law Scholars Workshop has provided a forum for faculty new to health law research to present their work and receive mentorship from established professors in the field. Past scholars have published their papers in the nation’s leading law journals. Each year, four promising scholars are selected among applicants from across the country — one of the highest honors for an early career health law researcher.
Covo, now an assistant professor of law at Case Western Reserve University, researches and teaches at the intersection of health law, disability law, and contracts. His scholarship has appeared in numerous top-tier journals, including the Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and University of Chicago Law Review. His newest article, “The Contractualization of Disability Rights Law,” examines how contract law can be reshaped to improve protections for people with disabilities.
Benavides, currently an assistant professor of business law at the University of Miami Herbert Business School, uses a political economy approach to public and private law to study the financialization of health care, industrial policy, the knowledge economy, and sustainable medical innovation. Her latest paper, “Medical Progress Financialization,” forthcoming in the Colorado Law Review, analyzes the legal architecture governing medical research and proposes reforms to decrease barriers to access to the benefits of life sciences innovation.
Both Covo and Benavides credit their time at Yale for profoundly influencing their development as health law scholars, as detailed in a profile of their work with the Solomon Center and their academic appointments.
About the Solomon Center
The Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School is the first of its kind to focus on the intersection of law and the governance, practice, and business of health care. The Center brings together leading experts and practitioners from the public and private sectors to address cutting-edge questions of health law and policy, and to train the next generation of top health lawyers, industry leaders, policymakers, and academics.
