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Agenda: World Energy Justice Conference And Appropriate Technology Arcade, University Of Colorado Boulder. Center For Energy & Environmental Security, University Of Colorado Boulder. School Of Law

World Energy Justice Conference (October 23-24)

The 2009 CEES Energy Justice Conference took place at the University of Colorado Law School on October 23rd and 24th, 2009. It featured 11 sessions, more than 40 speakers, and attracted over 200 attendees. The Conference brought together leading international and U.S. decision-makers in politics, engineering, public health, law, business, economics, and innovators in the sciences to explore how best to address the critical needs of the energy-oppressed poor (EOP) through long-term interdisciplinary action, information sharing, and deployment of appropriate sustainable energy technologies (ASETs).

The Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law & Policy (CJIELP) at the University of Colorado Law …

A Broader Liberty: Js Mill, Paternalism, And The Public’S Health, Lawrence O. Gostin, Kieran G. Gostin

O'Neill Institute Papers

Is the ‘harm principle’, famously propounded by JS Mill and widely adopted in bioethics, an appropriate principle to guide public health regulation? The harm principle limits liberty-limiting interventions to only those instances where the person poses a significant risk of harm to others. However, much of public health regulation is not primarily directed to avert risk to others, but to safeguard the health and safety of the individual him or herself. Think about regulations regarding seatbelts, motorcycle helmets, or the fluoridation of water as illustrations of pervasive public health regulations that are primarily intended to safeguard the individual’s own health …

Science, Politics, And Values: The Politicization Of Professional Practice Guidelines, Lawrence O. Gostin, John D. Kraemer

O'Neill Institute Papers

The Connecticut Attorney General’s recent allegations that the Infectious Disease Society of America violated antitrust law through its treatment guidelines for Lyme disease were neither based in sound science or appropriate legal judgment. Strong scientific evidence favors IDSA’s position that chronic infection with the etiologic agent of Lyme disease does not occur in the absence of objective signs of ongoing infection and that long-term antibiotic use to treat dubious infection, recommended in the quasi-scientific guidelines put forth by the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), are of no benefit. In siding with ILADS and other chronic Lyme disease advocates, …

Parents Should Not Be Legally Liable For Refusing To Vaccinate Their Children, Jay Gordon

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Should a parent who takes advantage of a personal belief exemption to avoid vaccinating a child be held liable if that child infects other people? No, because there are valid medical reasons for choosing this exemption and tracing direct transmission of these illnesses from an unvaccinated child to another person is virtually impossible.

The Problem Of Vaccination Noncompliance: Public Health Goals And The Limitations Of Tort Law, Daniel B. Rubin, Sophie Kasimow

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Imposing tort liability on parents who fail to vaccinate their children would not serve the public health and public policy interests that drive childhood immunization efforts. The public policy goals of vaccination are to slow the spread of disease and to reduce mortality and morbidity. Our country’s public health laws already play a substantial role in furthering these goals. Although application of tort law may be an appropriate response to some of the problems that result from vaccination noncompliance, there also is a need to cultivate public understanding of the connection between individual actions and collective wellbeing. It is doubtful …

Gambling With The Health Of Others, Stephen P. Teret, Jon S. Vernick

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The health and wellbeing of the public is, in part, a function of the behavior of individuals. When one individual’s behavior places another at a foreseeable and easily preventable risk of illness or injury, tort liability can play a valuable role in discouraging that conduct. This is true in the context of childhood immunization.

Unintended Consequences: The Primacy Of Public Trust In Vaccination, Jason L. Schwartz

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The increasing availability of personal belief exemptions from state vaccination requirements is a growing concern among proponents of vaccination. Holding parents of non-vaccinated children liable to those they infect is among the responses proposed to maintain high vaccination rates. Even if motivated by a sincere desire to maximize the benefits of vaccination throughout society, such a step would be inadvisable, further entrenching opponents of vaccination and adding to the atmosphere of confusion and unnecessary alarm that has become increasingly common among parents of children for whom vaccination is recommended.

Challenging Personal Belief Immunization Exemptions: Considering Legal Responses, Alexandra Stewart

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Public health agencies and citizens should employ legal approaches to hold parents accountable for refusing to vaccinate their children. The judiciary would craft an effective response to defeat the threat posed by these parents. Public-nuisance law may offer a legal mechanism to hold vaccine objectors liable for their actions.

Choices Should Have Consequences: Failure To Vaccinate, Harm To Others, And Civil Liability, Douglas S. Diekema

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

A parent’s decision not to vaccinate a child may place others at risk if the child becomes infected and exposes others to the disease. Should an individual harmed by an infection transmitted from a child whose parents chose to forgo vaccination have a negligence claim against those parents? While I do not hold a legal degree and therefore cannot speak directly to issues of law, as a physician and ethicist it seems to me that the basic elements that comprise negligence claims—harm, duty, breach of duty, and causation—are met in some cases where parents forgo vaccination.

In The Back Alleys Of Health Care: Abortion, Equality And Community In Canada, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The decriminalization of abortion in Canada ensured neither its availability nor accessibility as an integrated and publicly funded health service. While Canadian women are increasingly referred to or seek abortion services from single-purpose clinics, their exclusion from public health insurance often render these services inaccessible. This article considers denied funding for clinic abortion services from the perspective of the Canadian constitutional guarantee of sex equality. The article focuses on the 2004 Court of Queen's Bench's judgment in Jane Doe I v. Manitoba, which framed denied public funding for clinic abortion services as a violation of women's equality rights under the …

Assessing Laws And Legal Authorities For Obesity Prevention And Control, Lawrence O. Gostin, Jennifer L. Pomeranz, Peter D. Jacobson, Richard N. Gottfried

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This is the first paper in a two part series on the laws and legal authorities for obesity prevention and control, which resulted from the National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control in 2008. In this paper, the authors apply the “laws and legal authorities” component of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) legal framework on public health legal preparedness to demonstrate the essential role that law can play in the fight against obesity. Their analysis identified numerous laws and policies in the three vital domains of healthy lifestyles, healthy places, and healthy societies. For …

Improving Laws And Legal Authorities For Obesity Prevention And Control, Lawrence O. Gostin, Jennifer L. Pomeranz

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This is the second paper in a two part series on the laws and legal authorities for obesity prevention and control. In this paper, the authors present the applicable laws and legal authorities that public health professionals and lawyers can consider implementing to close the legal gaps identified in the first paper (“Assessing Laws and Legal Authorities for Obesity Prevention and Control”). This set of legal action items encompass the federal, tribal, state, local, and community levels and should be considered when developing, implementing, and evaluating obesity prevention and control strategies and interventions.

The paper organizes the action items within …

After The Revolution: Global Health Politics In A Time Of Economic Crisis And Threatening Future Trends, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 2008, global health’s political revolution, which unfolded over the preceding 10-15 years, ended when four global crises damaged global health and altered the political, diplomatic, and governance contexts in which global health activities operate. The climate change, energy, food, and economic crises revealed limitations in global health’s ability to shape large-scale political, economic, and environmental problems that adversely affect health or harm underlying determinants of health. In addition, projected trends in world affairs potentially threaten health and the ability of countries to craft effective collective action responses to global problems damaging health directly and indirectly. In the post-revolution period, …

The Emergent Logic Of Health Law, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The American health care system is on a glide path toward ruin. Health spending has become the fiscal equivalent of global warming, and the number of uninsured Americans is approaching fifty million. Can law help to divert our country from this path? There are reasons for deep skepticism. Law governs the provision and financing of medical care in fragmented and incoherent fashion. Commentators from diverse perspectives bemoan this chaos, casting it as an obstacle to change. I contend in this Article that pessimism about health law’s prospects is unjustified, but that a new understanding of health law’s disarray is urgently …

The Irrational Woman: Informed Consent And Abortion Decision-Making, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

In Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on a type of second-trimester abortion that many physicians believe is safer for their patients. Carhart presented a watershed moment in abortion law, because it marks the Supreme Court’s first use of the anti-abortion movement’s “woman-protective” rationale to uphold a ban on abortion and the first time since Roe v. Wade that the Court denied women a health exception to an abortion restriction. The woman-protective rationale asserts that banning abortion promotes women’s mental health. According to Carhart, the State should make the final decisions about pregnant women’s healthcare, because …