Peter Joseph Hammer (ar7084)
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Contact information
Law School
Peter J. Hammer was named the A. Alfred Taubman Endowed Chair at Wayne State University Law School in fall 2018. Hammer has taught at Wayne Law since 2003 and is the director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. The Keith Center is dedicated to promoting the educational, economic and political empowerment of under-represented communities in urban areas and to ensuring that the phrase "equal justice under law" applies to all members of society. Hammer was instrumental in editing and compiling Judge Damon J. Keith’s biography, Crusader for Justice: Federal Judge Damon J. Keith (2013).
Hammer has become a leading voice on the economic and social issues impacting the city of Detroit, and has added new courses to the law school curriculum on "Race, Law and Social Change in Southeast Michigan" and "Re-Imagining Development in Detroit: Institutions, Law & Society."
Hammer has expertise in the fields of domestic health law and policy, as well as international public health and economic development. He is a recipient of an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and served as lead editor for Uncertain Times: Kenneth Arrow and the Changing Economics of Health Care, a book published by Duke University Press (2003). Combining his training as an economist and a lawyer, his most recent book, Change and Continuity at the World Bank: Reforming Paradoxes of Economic Development (2013), takes on questions of international economic growth and development. His scholarship also has examined the role of global health initiatives in health system development and how international law might further the objectives of global child health.
Hammer has spent more than 25 years engaging issues of human rights, law and development in Cambodia. He was a founding board member and past president of Legal Aid of Cambodia, an organization providing free legal services to Cambodia's poor. He is presently a board member of the Center for Khmer Studies and the Life and Hope Association, an organization in Siem Reap, Cambodia, founded and run by Buddhists monks to address the needs of orphans, vulnerable children and at-risk young women.
When in Southeast Michigan rather than Southeast Asia, Hammer is equally engaged in the community. He is a member of the board of directors of the ACLU of Michigan. He works actively with groups such as the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, We the People of Detroit and the Detroit People’s Platform.
Prior to entering academia, he was an associate at the Los Angeles office of O'Melveny & Myers, where he maintained an active practice in antitrust, health law and the presentation of expert economic testimony. Hammer earned his undergraduate degree at Gonzaga University and completed his professional and graduate studies at the University of Michigan, where he earned a J.D. and a Ph.D. (economics). Before entering private practice, he clerked for the Hon. Alfred T. Goodwin, former chief judge of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Hammer spent eight years on the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School. He was the first openly gay professor ever to be considered for tenure at the law school and the first male in the living memory of the institution to be denied tenure. The final vote was 18 in favor of tenure and 12 opposed (2 votes short of the required two-thirds majority). Hammer tells the story of his experiences attempting to internally grieve the tenure denial in an article, In the Shadow of Gratz and Grutter: Grieving Diversity at the University of Michigan.
J.D., Ph.D. (economics), University of Michigan
B.A., B.A., B.S., Gonzaga University
Race Law & Social Change in Southeast Michigan
Re-Imagining Development in Detroit: Institutions, Law & Society
International Organizations & Public Health
Health Care Organizations & Finance
Health Care Quality, Licensing & Liability
Health Policy: The Firm, The Market & The Law
Contracts
In the Shadow of Gratz and Grutter: Grieving Diversity at the University of Michigan, 2 Midwest Black Law Students Association Law Journal
The Chinese in Cambodia: Economic and Political Inclusion and Exclusion in the Post. Independence Era, International Review of Modern Sociology
Crusader for Justice: Federal Judge Damon J. Keith (Peter J. Hammer, ed., with Trevor W. Coleman) (Wayne State University Press) (2013)
Change and Continuity at the World Bank: Reforming Paradoxes of Economic Development (Edward Elgar) (2013)
Contracting Illness: Reassessing International Donor-Initiated Health Service Experiments in Cambodia's Indigenous Periphery, 21 Southeast Asian Research 457 (2013) (with Ian G. Baird)
Health (R)evolution: (Quality = Learning) + (Ethics = Justice), 10 Ind. Health L. Rev. 415 (2013)
Global Health Initiatives and Health System Development: The Historic Quest for Positive Synergies, 9 Ind. Health L. Rev. 567 (2012) (with Charla M. Burill)
International Law, Governance and Global Children's Health, in Textbook of Pediatric Global Health (Deepak Kamat, ed.) (American Academy of Pediatrics) (2012)
Governance: Structuring our Future, 13 The Journal of Law in Society 3 (2011)
The Fate of the Detroit Public Schools: Governance, Finance and Competition, 13 The Journal of Law in Society 111 (2011)
Diagnosing America's Healthcare Ills: Analysis Beyond Epithet, 15 J. Law & Med. 337 (2011)
International Law, Public Health and Addiction, in Principles of Addiction and the Law (Norman S. Miller, ed.) (American Psychiatric Association) (Elsevier) (2010)
Complex Adaptive Systems: The Narrow Horizons of Malpractice Reform, 14 J. Law & Med. 477 (2010)
Introduction: Living on the Margins: Minorities and Borderlines in Cambodia and Southeast Asia in Living on the Margins: Minorities and Borderlines in Cambodia and Southeast Asia (Peter J. Hammer, ed.) (Center for Khmer Studies) (2009)
Development as Tragedy: The Asian Development Bank and Indigenous Peoples in Cambodia, in Living on the Margins: Minorities and Borderlines in Cambodia and Southeast Asia (Peter J. Hammer, ed.) (Center for Khmer Studies) (2009)
The Architecture of Health Care Markets: Economic Sociology and Antitrust Law, HOUS. J. HEALTH L & POLICY (2007)
The Trials of Tenofovir: Mediating the Ethics of Third-World Research, 4 U. SANTA CLARA J. INT'L. (2006); 9 U. TECH. SYDNEY L. REV. 184 (2005) (with Tammy Sue Lundstrom)
Competition and Quality as Dynamic Processes in the Balkans of American Health Care, 31 J. HEALTH POLITICS, POLICY & LAW 473 (Special Issue, Evaluation of DOJ/FTC Report Improving Health Care: A Dose of Competition Peter D. Jacobson and David A. Hyman, eds.) (2006)
Slaying Dragons: Malpractice Beyond Myth, Review of The Medical Malpractice Myth by Tom Baker, 25(1) HEALTH AFFAIRS 289 (January/February 2006)
Medical Code Blue or Blue Light Special: Where is the Market for Indigent Care?, 6 J.L. Soc'y 82 (2005)
The Elusive Face of Cambodian Justice, in AWAITING JUSTICE: ESSAYS ON ACCOUNTABILITY IN CAMBODIA (Beth Van Shaack, ed.) (Mellon Press) (2005)
Competition Law in Cambodia, in COMPETITION LAW AND POLICY IN ASIAN COUNTRIES, (G.Sivalingam, ed.) (Consumer International) (2004)
Monopsony as an Agency and Regulatory Problem in Health Care, 71 ANTITRUST L. J. 949 (2004) (with William M. Sage)
Struck Down: State "Any Willing Provider" Laws Frustrate HMO Ability to Offer Care, editorial in LOS ANGELES DAILY JOURNAL at A6 (February 3, 2003)
Critical Issues in Hospital Antitrust Law, 22(6) HEALTH AFFAIRS 88 (November/December 2003) (with William M. Sage)
Institutional Economics for Health Policy?, Review of The Economic Dynamics of Environmental Law by David M. Driesen, 22(2) HEALTH AFFAIRS 277 (March/April 2003)
A Copernican View of Health Care Antitrust, 65 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 241 (Special Issue: Is the Health Care Revolution Over?, Clark C. Havighurst, ed.) (2002) (with William M. Sage)
Antitrust, Health Care Quality, and the Courts, 102 COLUM. L. REV. 545 (2002) (with William M. Sage)
How Doctors Became Distributors: A Fabled Story of Vertical Relations, (AALS Antitrust Law Section, Guilds at the Millennium: Antitrust and the Professions) 14 LOY. CONSUMER L. REP. 411 (2002)
The Pricing of Essential Aids Drugs: Markets, Politics and Public Health, 5(4) J. INT'L ECON. LAW 883 (Special Issue: International Trade Law and Public Health, Gregg Bloche, ed..) (2002)
Medical Antitrust Reform: Arrow, Coase and the Changing Structure of the Firm, in THE PRIVATIZATION OF HEALTH CARE REFORM, at 113 (Gregg Bloche, ed.) (Oxford University Press) (2002)
Rush Prudential HMO v. Moran: The Need for a Consistent Theory of ERISA Health Care Regulation, HEALTH LAW NEWS at 5 (October 2002)
Health Care Quality and Antitrust Law: Lessons from the Cases, in 2002 HEALTH LAW HANDBOOK at 549 (Alice G. Gosfield, ed) (West Group) (2002) (with William Sage)
Introduction: "Why Arrow? Why Now?, 26(5) J. HEALTH POLITICS, POLICY & LAW 835 (Special Issue, Kenneth Arrow and the Changing Economics of Health Care, Peter J. Hammer, Deborah Haas-Wilson, and William M. Sage, eds.) (2001)
Arrow's Analysis of Social Institutions: Entering the Marketplace with Giving Hands? 26(5) J. HEALTH POLITICS, POLICY & LAW 1011 (Special Issue, Kenneth Arrow and the Changing Economics of Health Care, Peter J. Hammer, Deborah Haas-Wilson, and William M. Sage, eds.) (2001)
Pegram v. Herdrich: On Peritonitis, Preemption and the Elusive Goal of Managed Care Accountability, 26(4) J. HEALTH POLITICS, POLICY & LAW 767 (2001)
Antitrust Beyond Competition: Market Failures, Total Welfare and the Challenge of Intra-Market Second Best Tradeoffs, 98 MICH. L. REV. 849 (2000)
Assisted Suicide and the Challenge of Individually Determined Collective Rationality, in LAW AT THE END OF LIFE: THE SUPREME COURT AND ASSISTED SUICIDE, (Carl Schneider, ed.) (University of Michigan Press) (2000)
Killing the Khmer Rouge?, J. OF THE INT'L INSTITUTE at 1 (Vol. 7, no.2, Winter 2000) (University of Michigan)
Questioning Traditional Antitrust Presumptions: Price and Non-Price Competition in Hospital Markets, (Symposium Issue, What's the Prognosis: Managed Care in the Next Century), 32 MICH. J. L. REF. 727 (1999)
Competing on Quality of Care: The Need to Develop a Competition Policy for Health Care Markets, (Symposium Issue, What's the Prognosis: Managed Care in the Next Century), 32 MICH. J. L. REF. 1069 (1999) (with William M. Sage)
Price and Quality Competition in Health Care Markets: The Comparative Institutional Case Against an Antitrust Exemption for Medical Self-Regulation, in ACHIEVING QUALITY IN MANAGED CARE: THE ROLE OF LAW, 123-53 (John D. Blum, ed.) (Health Law Section ABA) (June 1997)
Destroying the Village, PHNOM PENH POST, 10 (September 12-25, 1997)
Help Cambodia: Period of Turmoil is no Time to Cut Back on U.S. Assistance, DETROIT FREE PRESS, A15 (July 31, 1997)
Free Speech and the Acid Bath: An Evaluation and Critique of Judge Richard Posner's Economic Interpretation of the First Amendment, 87 MICH. L. REV. 499 (1988)
Courses taught by Peter Joseph Hammer
Winter Term 2025 (future)
Fall Term 2024 (current)
Fall Term 2023
Winter Term 2023
Fall Term 2022
Winter Term 2022
Recent university news spotlights
- As Detroit makes progress against crime, reputation still lags
- Michigan responses to hate
- I didn't take Tea Party, Trump seriously. Now I worry about the rise of authoritarianism: Professor Peter Hammer provides an Op-Ed
- The Detroit Equity Action Lab (DEAL), a DJK initiative, welcomes eighth program cohort
- Damon J. Keith Center’s 8th Biennial Lecture explores race and justice through poetry and music
- Wayne Law Professors Named Finalists for Next Generation Indie Book Award