Law Commons^™

Human Rights For Health Across The United Nations, Benjamin Mason Meier, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The United Nations (UN) plays a central role in realizing human rights to advance global health. Looking beyond state obligations, the UN has called on all its specialized agencies to mainstream human rights across all their activities. With globalization compelling these UN institutions to meet an expanding set of global challenges to underlying determinants of health, human rights are guiding these international organizations in addressing public health. These international organizations within the UN system are actively engaged in implementing health-related human rights—in both their mission and their actions to carry out that mission. Through this mainstreaming of human rights, global …

Brief Of Amici Curiae National Health Law Program And National Network Of Abortion Funds Supporting Petitioners-Cross-Respondents, Maya Manian, Jill E. Adams, Sara Ainsworth, Abigail K. Coursolle, Yvonne Lidgren, Sarah Somers, Melanie R. Medalle

Amicus Briefs

No abstract provided.

Due Process Supreme Court Appellate Division Second Department

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Legal Determinants Of Health: Harnessing The Power Of Law For Global Health And Sustainable Development, Lawrence O. Gostin, John T. Monahan, Jenny Kaldor, Mary Debartolo, Eric A. Friedman, Katie Gottschalk, Susan C. Kim, Ala Alwan, Agnes Binagwaho, Gian Luca Burci, Luisa Cabal, Katherine Deland, Timothy Grant Evans, Eric Goosby, Sara Hossain, Howard Koh, Gorik Ooms, Mirta Roses Periago, Rodrigo Uprimny, Alicia E. Yamin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Health risks in the 21st century are beyond the control of any country. In an era of globalization, promoting public health and equity requires cooperation and coordination both within and among states. Law can be a powerful tool for advancing global health, yet it remains significantly underutilised and poorly understood. Working in partnership, public health lawyers and health professionals can become champions for evidence-based laws to ensure the public’s health and safety.

The O'Neill Institute/Georgetown University Lancet Commission on Law and Global Health articulates the vital role of law – through legal instruments, legal capacities, and institutional reforms, as well …

Just Care: A Relational Approach To Autonomy And Decision Making Of Parents Committed To Religious Or Indigenous Traditional Practices, Tu-Quynh Trinh

LLM Theses

Hamilton Health Sciences Corp. v. D.H. and B. (R.) v. Children’s Aid Society of Metropolitan Toronto tell important stories about people and relationships—and about parenthood; autonomy; religious believers and cultural communities; and the role of the state in family, culture, and religion. Their narratives were influenced by liberalism and emphasize a degree of individualism that is incongruous given the subject matter of parent child relationships and their place within communities and the law. This thesis explores the application of relational theory and the integrated principles of justice and care to these issues. Ultimately, the stories these judicial opinions tell help …

Deputizing Family: Loved Ones As A Regulatory Tool In The "Drug War" And Beyond, Matthew J.B. Lawrence

Faculty Scholarly Works

Many laws use family members as a regulatory tool to influence the decisions or behavior of their loved ones, i.e., they deputize family. Involuntary treatment laws for substance use disorder are a clear example; such laws empower family members to use information shared by their loved ones to petition to force their loved ones into treatment without consent. Whether such deputization is helpful or harmful for a patient’s health is a crucial and dubious question discussed in existing literature, but use of family members as a regulatory tool implicates important considerations beyond direct medical impacts that have not been as …

Supervised Injection Facilities: Legal And Policy Reforms, Lawrence O. Gostin, James G. Hodge, Chelsea L. Gulinson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 70 000 deaths from drug overdoses occurred in 2017, including prescription and illicit opioids, representing a 6-fold increase since 1999. Innovative harm-reduction solutions are imperative. Supervised injection facilities (SIFs) create safe places for drug injection, including overdose prevention, counseling, and treatment referral services. Supervised injection facilities neither provide illicit drugs nor do their personnel inject users. Supervised injection facilities are effective in reducing drug-related mortality, morbidity, and needle-borne infections. Yet their lawfulness remains uncertain. The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently threatened criminal prosecution for SIF operators, medical personnel, …

Fighting Novel Diseases Amidst Humanitarian Crises, Lawrence O. Gostin, Neil R. Sircar, Eric A. Friedman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Humanitarian crises are becoming more prevalent and, frequently, more complex, in zones of mis-governance, lack of government presence, and even active conflict, marked by public mistrust and insecurity. The WHO and other health emergency responders lack the capacities and mandate to adequately respond. The current Ebola outbreak in an area of an active insurgency in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is just such a crisis. The State Department has banned U.S. personnel from the outbreak zone due to safety concerns, leaving the population feeling abandoned, potentially increasing the threat to the few brave health workers who remain.

We need …

Living, Aging, And Dying In Healthy And Just Societies: Life Lessons From My Father, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

My father passed away at 102 years old. He lived, aged, and died well. But that is rare in the United States and globally. The World Health Organization defines palliative care “throughout the life course” as improving quality of life for patients and families and relieving pain and suffering, while paying special attention to physical, psychosocial, and spiritual functioning. That’s the global vision, but then there’s the reality. Palliative care, in practice, has been little more than pain relief at life’s end—and in much of the world, not even that.

We need to reimagine palliation, embracing a communal or relational …

Financial Impact Of The Opioid Crisis On Local Government: Quantifying Costs For Litigation And Policymaking, Elizabeth Weeks

Scholarly Works

The opioids epidemic has had a significant impact on individuals and communities, including local governments responsible for serving and protecting those affected individuals. This is the first study of its kind to consider whether those local government costs are quantifiable, a question that has salience both for pending opioid litigation in federal and state courts and for local planning and budgeting decisions. This article first provides a detailed description of the opioid litigation landscape, including the federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) in Ohio, the Native American tribes’ actions, and various procedural and other hurdles that local government plaintiffs face in seeking …

Revisionist History? Responding To Gun Violence Under Historical Limitations, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

In the D.C. Circuit case Heller v. District of Columbia (Heller II), Judge Kavanaugh wrote that “Heller and McDonald leave little doubt that courts are to assess gun bans and regulations based on text, history, and tradition, not by a balancing test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny.” Now Justice Kavanaugh, will he find support on the highest court for what was then a dissenting view? Chief Justice Roberts, during oral arguments for Heller I, asked “Isn’t it enough to…look at the various regulations that were available at the time…and determine how these—how this restriction and the scope of this …

Healthism In Tort Law, Elizabeth Weeks

Scholarly Works

This article draws on the author's recently published book, Healthism: Health Status Discrimination and the Law (with Jessica L. Roberts) (Cambridge University Press 2018), examining tort law doctrine and policy for examples of differential treatment of health status or behaviors. Just as scholars previously have drawn attention to discrimination based on race, sex, age, and other protected categories in tort law, the article urges similar examination of tort law's potential to discriminate against the unhealthy. The article discusses the potential for healthism in the reasonably prudent person standard of care, contributory negligence, assumption of the risk, noneconomic damages caps, impaired …

Teaching Tomorrow’S Lawyers Through A (Semi-) Generalist, (Mostly-) Individual Client Poverty Law Clinic: Reflections On Five Years Of The Community Health Law Partnership, Jason A. Cade

Scholarly Works

Design options when starting a live-client clinic from scratch can be somewhat overwhelming. Should the clinic focus on systemic impact or individual representation? Appellate work or hearings? Should the clinic specialize or cover multiple legal issues? Another set of issues concerns how the clinic should find and accept its clients, and whether students should have a role in the intake process. The list of choices goes on. In this Essay, written for the Georgia Law Review’s Online Issue celebrating 50 years of clinics at the University of Georgia School of Law, I describe how I have navigated these and other …

Knowledge Of Practicing Physicians About Their Legal Obligations When Caring For Patients With Disability, Nicole Agaronnik, Elizabeth Pendo, Julie Ressalam, Eric G. Campbell, Lisa Iezzoni

All Faculty Scholarship

doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2018.05060 HEALTH AFFAIRS 38, NO. 4 (2019): 545–553

"Undue Hardship" And Uninsured Americans: How Access To Healthcare Should Impact Student-Loan Discharge In Bankruptcy, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

Student-loan debt has grown to unprecedented heights. Contributing to the severe burden imposed by these debts is the Bankruptcy Code’s unique presumption that they are not dischargeable. To overcome that presumption, a debtor must establish that repayment of her loans would constitute an “undue hardship.” This essay examines the disagreement among bankruptcy courts that have interpreted the “undue hardship” standard in situations where a debtor is unable to afford health insurance—a common occurrence among the economically disadvantaged. After examining recent healthcare reforms, I argue that Congress has expressed a judgment that all Americans should obtain minimum essential healthcare. Though this …

Us Military Medical Ethics In The War On Terror, George J. Annas, Sondra S. Crosby

Faculty Scholarship

Military medical ethics has been challenged by the post-11 September 2001 ‘War on Terror’. Two recurrent questions are whether military physicians are officers first or physicians first, and whether military physicians need a separate code of ethics. In this article, we focus on how the War on Terror has affected the way we have addressed these questions since 2001. Two examples frame this discussion: the use of military physicians to force-feed hunger strikers held in Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and the uncertain fate of the Department of Defense’s report on ‘Ethical Guidelines and Practices for US Military …

Deputizing Family: Loved Ones As A Regulatory Tool In The 'Drug War' And Beyond, Matthew Lawrence

Matthew B. Lawrence