Allison M. Whelan

Assistant Professor of Law

Georgia State University College of Law

Allison M. Whelan is an Assistant Professor at Georgia State University College of Law and an Affiliate at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics. Her research and teaching encompass a broad set of medical, science, and social policy issues at the intersection of health law, FDA law, reproductive justice, administrative law,  constitutional law, and bioethics.

Before joining Georgia State, Allison was a Sharswood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and an Associate Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to her fellowships, she practiced law at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, DC, where she was a senior associate in the firm’s Food, Drug, and Device practice group. Her practice included building expertise in agency rulemaking and navigating bringing products to the market, with a focus on pharmaceutical regulation.

Allison’s work has been recognized by peers in the academy, as well as her colleagues at Georgia State University College of Law. She was named a “Rising Star” by the Hastings Center in 2024 and she received the Georgia State University of Law’s Patricia T. Morgan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in May 2025. She has published or has forthcoming articles in the Vanderbilt Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, Chicago Legal Forum, Minnesota Law Review, and Iowa Law Review, among many others. Harvard, Chicago Legal Forum, Minnesota, Iowa, among others. She is the author of numerous book chapters, and she also publishes op-eds and commentary, including for the Journal of the American Medical Association, Harvard Bill of Health, Harvard Social Impact Review, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Ms. Magazine.

Allison graduated, summa cum laude and Order of the Coif, from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2014, where she served as Lead Note and Comment Editor for the Minnesota Law Review. She also holds a Master of Arts in Bioethics from the University of Minnesota.