Law Commons^™

End-Of-Life Decision Making: What We Don’T Know, We Make Up; What We Do Know, We Ignore, Sandra H. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

The recent emergence of substantial empirical research in bioethics reveals gaps between “reality” and the normative principles that largely instruct American bioethics and the legal framework of health care. This Article examines how the debate over the appropriate source of legal and ethical norms in medicine has been played out in judicial decisions regarding the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

The article begins with an analysis of the Ninth Circuit’s 1996 majority opinion in Compassion in Dying v. Washington, later reversed by the Supreme Court. In support of the legalization of physician-assisted suicide, the Ninth Circuit emphasized the role of empirical …

How Many Libertarians Does It Take To Fix The Health Care System?, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

The libertarian prescription for health care reform is a admixture of deregulation and purportedly utilitarian calculation of social benefits and costs. In Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Right to Health Care?, Richard Epstein's offers a stark roadmap that embraces an unfettered free market for health care services, indigent care left primarily to the charitable impulses of providers and no cross subsidies between classes, generations or other categories of citizens (including the sick and healthy). This review essay argues that the history, economics, and politics of health markets belie Epstein's abstract reasoning. Though much of the argument in Mortal Peril is written …

Research Report: A Preliminary Analysis Of Medical Futility Decisionmaking: Law And Professional Attitudes, Richard L. Wiener Ph.D., David Eton M.A., Vincent P. Gibbons M.D., Jesse A. Goldner J.D., Sandra H. Johnson J.D.

All Faculty Scholarship

The debate in medical futility decisionmaking centers on the conflict between a patient insisting treatment and a doctor refusing to furnish it. Courts have taken two disparate approaches to the legal status of medical futility. Believing that such legal ambiguity may reflect ambiguity in the medical profession itself, this research report sought to identify any emerging consensus among professionals handling medical futility issues.

The report explains the results of the Life Sustaining Treatment Survey, a nationwide survey of health care professionals at hospitals. Presented with a list of criteria, respondents assigned important ratings to the factors used in recent futility …