Madeleine Schachter

Madeleine Schachter has been teaching Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College since 2008, and she serves on an Institutional Review Board, where she reviews and monitors biomedical research on human subjects relating to cancer. She is a member of the Ethics Committee of New York Presbyterian Hospital, and attends the Medical Ethics Division’s weekly ethics consult review meetings.

Ms. Schachter’s teaching experience also includes her work for a decade as an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University School of Law, where (while practicing law full time), she taught 17 courses to candidates for J.D. and L.LM. degrees on media law, Internet speech and regulation, and privacy.

Her work on global health-related issues includes advising an international humanitarian non-governmental organization with respect to a program to solicit innovative approaches to reduce maternal, neonatal, and child mortality in Malawi and other African countries; representing the International Red Cross to draft harmonized model legislation to address disaster response; providing on-the-ground support to an international medical mission as it performed volunteer restorative surgery on under-privileged children with cleft lips and cleft palates in Leyte, The Philippines, where she assisted with pre-, intra- and post-operative photographic and other documentation of patients; and helping to assess the impact of newly-constructed well systems in the Tonkolili District of Sierra Leone on the incidence of diarrheal and other diseases and reviewing the impact of obstetric programs in Freetown, Sierra Leone.  In addition, Ms. Schachter assisted a non-profit that provides national and international needs-based scholarships and service opportunities in Africa to under-represented minority medical students and healthcare professionals.  She also collaborated with McKinsey and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, on whose Advisory Board she serves, to advise on a strategic plan for the latter organization about its medical, psychiatric, social services, and legal work on behalf of victims of torture from more than 100 countries.

Ms. Schachter has also provided legal and policy guidance in consultation with governments, such as by working on a freedom of information act for Yemen, presenting to Parliamentarians and others in Sana’a, a law Yemen subsequently enacted; advising a not-for-profit organization in consultation with the White House Office of Science and Technology and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on issues relating to humanitarian uses of patents, which included meetings conducted at the White House; drafting legislation in collaboration with three multinational companies for an international NGO to prohibit socioeconomic and sexual exploitation of women in the workplace in Nepal, which included presentations to Nepali legislators and others in Kathmandu; and meeting with governmental officials and journalists in Yemen, Bulgaria, and Jamaica to comment on U.S. legal perspectives relating to freedoms of press and speech at the invitation of the U.S. Department of State and the respective American Embassies in Sana’a, Sofia, and Kingston.

Ms. Schachter has been Managing Director of Social Investment for Global Access to Technology for Development, where she developed a global corporate social responsibility platform for public-private partnerships that focuses on humanitarian and health issues to address global poverty through demand-driven innovation. Her work comprised a book she wrote, entitled Global Social Investment: A Practical Handbook for Corporate Social Responsibility Programs (published in 2013), which covers the theories and practice, pragmatic approaches, and methodological tools for impact measurement.

She is the author of three other books: Law of Internet Speech (third edition with Joel Kurtzberg), Informational and Decisional Privacy, and The Law Professor’s Handbook: A Practical Guide to Teaching Law. She has co-authored articles published in medical journals: “Patently Controversial: Markets, Morals, and the President’s Proposal for Embryonic Stem Cell Research,” 12 Kennedy Inst. Ethics J. 265 (2002), and “Industry and the Heuristic Device: Ethics, Patent Law and Clinical Investigation,” 8 J. Accountability in Res. 1 (2001).  She has been a frequent lecturer on ethical issues, including journalistic ethics and legal ethics.

Previously, Ms. Schachter was Partner/Global Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at the international law firm Baker & McKenzie, where she worked exclusively on global pro bono and community service, diversity and inclusion, and sustainability matters, including in an active pro bono practice and by leading the firm’s pro bono practice in which companies’ in-house counsel collaborated with the firm on pro bono representations.  Ms. Schachter was also an in-house counsel for more than twenty years, including at Time Warner where she helped launch and chaired the company’s pro bono program for all of its divisions. Her work has included the development of protocols and policies for the selection, launch, vetting, and implementation of domestic and cross-border pro bono, including in teaming arrangements with multinational companies’ lawyers.

Ms. Schachter has also held leadership positions, including as the Co-Chair of the American Bar Association’s International Pro Bono Committee, Chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Pro Bono and Legal Services Committee, and a founder and Chair of the Corporate Counsel Pro Bono Coordinators. She previously was Chair of the New York State Bar Association Committees on Media Law and on Cyberspace Law, and served on PILnet’s Pro Bono Council Leadership Counsel.

In 1979, Ms. Schachter earned her B.A. degree, Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, at the University of Pennsylvania, where she did a dual major in Medical Ethics (which she designed) and Political Science. She received a J.D. degree in 1982 from the New York University School of Law, where she was a Root Tilden Scholar.