Philosophy Commons^™

Rights-Based Theories Of Accident Law, Gregory J. Hall

All Faculty Scholarship

This article shows that extant rights-based theories of accident law contain a gaping hole. They inadequately address the following question: What justifies using community standards to assign accident costs in tort law?

In the United States, the jury determines negligence for accidental harm by asking whether the defendant met the objective reasonable person standard. However, what determines the content of the reasonable person standard is enigmatic. Some tort theorists say that the content is filled out by juries using cost benefit analysis while others say that juries apply community norms and conventions. I demonstrate that what is missing from this …

Minimal Risk Remains An Open Question, Ariella Binik, Charles Weijer, Mark Sheehan

Charles Weijer

No abstract provided.

Does Clinical Equipoise Apply To Cluster Randomized Trials In Health Research?, Ariella Binik, Charles Weijer, Andrew Mcrae, Jeremy Grimshaw, Robert Boruch, Jamie Brehaut, Allan Donner, Martin Eccles, Raphael Saginur, Monica Taljaard, Merrick Zwarenstein

Charles Weijer

This article is part of a series of papers examining ethical issues in cluster randomized trials (CRTs) in health research. In the introductory paper in this series, Weijer and colleagues set out six areas of inquiry that must be addressed if the cluster trial is to be set on a firm ethical foundation. This paper addresses the third of the questions posed, namely, does clinical equipoise apply to CRTs in health research? The ethical principle of beneficence is the moral obligation not to harm needlessly and, when possible, to promote the welfare of research subjects. Two related ethical problems have …

Ethical Issues Posed By Cluster Randomized Trials In Health Research, Charles Weijer, Jeremy Grimshaw, Monica Taljaard, Ariella Binik, Robert Boruch, Jamie Brehaut, Allan Donner, Martin Eccles, Antonio Gallo, Andrew Mcrae, Raphael Saginur, Merrick Zwarenstein

Charles Weijer

The cluster randomized trial (CRT) is used increasingly in knowledge translation research, quality improvement research, community based intervention studies, public health research, and research in developing countries. However, cluster trials raise difficult ethical issues that challenge researchers, research ethics committees, regulators, and sponsors as they seek to fulfill responsibly their respective roles. Our project will provide a systematic analysis of the ethics of cluster trials. Here we have outlined a series of six areas of inquiry that must be addressed if the cluster trial is to be set on a firm ethical foundation: 1. Who is a research subject? 2. …

Managing Moral Risk: The Case Of Contract, Aditi Bagchi

All Faculty Scholarship

The concept of moral luck describes how the moral character of our actions seems to depend on factors outside our control. Implications of moral luck have been extensively explored in criminal law and tort law, but there is no literature on moral luck in contract law. I show that contract is an especially illuminating domain for the study of moral luck because it highlights that moral luck is not just a dark cloud over morality and the law to bemoan or ignore. We anticipate moral luck, i.e., we manage our moral risk, when we take into account the possibility that …