Emerge Law Group is pleased to announce that Kathryn L. Tucker is joining our firm as Special Counsel, to co-lead our Psychedelics Practice Group with Dave Kopilak.
Kathryn is well known for her decades of advocacy to protect and expand the rights of terminally ill patients, which she has done in leadership positions at a number of nonprofit organizations, after beginning her career with Perkins Coie, in Seattle. While at Perkins Coie, she served as campaign counsel for the nation’s first initiative campaign for Death with Dignity in Washington in 1991. She then helped lead the nonprofit corporation Compassion in Dying of Washington, and its successor national organization Compassion & Choices, serving two decades as Director of Advocacy and Legal Affairs.
Kathryn developed a national multidimensional advocacy agenda to galvanize changes in law and policy to expand the rights of terminally ill patients. She brought a number of cases to the Supreme Court of the United States, establishing and protecting important patient rights. From 2014-2016, Kathryn served as Executive Director of the Disability Rights Legal Center (“DRLC”) in Los Angeles, the nation’s oldest cross disability advocacy organization. During her tenure at DRLC, she founded the End of Life Liberty Project (“ELLP”) to continue her advocacy on behalf of terminally ill patients.
Kathryn has held faculty appointments at Loyola, the University of Washington, Seattle University, and Lewis & Clark Schools of Law, teaching in the areas of law, medicine, and ethics, and has published dozens of articles in journals of law, medicine, and health policy. She is a Fulbright Specialist at the University of Auckland, the University of Canterbury, and the University of Otago, in New Zealand. She is a frequent speaker at national conferences for legal, medical, and health policy professionals.
In 2017 Kathryn was a co-convener, in collaboration with Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and Drug Policy Alliance, of a national symposium held at the University of Washington exploring advocacy avenues to expand access to psychedelic medicine. She is author of “Psychedelic Medicine: Galvanizing Changes in Law and Policy to Allow Access for Patients Suffering Anxiety Associated with Terminal Illness”, 21 Quinnipiac Health L. J. 239 (2018) and “Oregon’s Pioneering Effort to Enact State Law to Allow Access to Psilocybin, a New Palliative Care Tool,” which will soon be published by the Willamette Law Review.
Kathryn has also been assisting the Yes on 109 campaign to support Oregon Ballot Measure 109 (formerly Oregon Initiative Petition 2020-034).
Emerge Law Group is thrilled to have Kathryn bring her incredible experience and leadership to us as we grow our Psychedelics Practice Group at this pivotal moment in time.
