Law Commons^™

Caught In The Middle: Providing Obstetric Care When Pregnant Women Have Complications, Ellen Clayton, Luke Gatta

Utah Law Review

Physicians in abortion-restrictive states who care for pregnant women who become ill are facing new challenges as they try to meet their patients’ needs while avoiding criminal prosecution on the one hand or civil litigation if there is a bad outcome, especially when care is affected by the threat of vague statutes, on the other. All these legal actions will occur in the public eye. Unfortunately, the proposed changes to HIPAA do not protect against criminal prosecution when the medical exception for the woman’s health is at issue.

Two changes are needed. The first is amending the state statutes to …

Halted Innovation: The Expansion Of Federal Jurisdiction Over Medicine And The Human Body, Myrisha S. Lewis

Utah Law Review

Modern medical innovations are blurring the line between medical practice and medical devices and drugs. Historically, many techniques have been developed in medicine, without any interference from the federal government, as medical practice is (and has historically been) an area of state jurisdiction. Over the past two decades, however, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been exerting jurisdiction over the human body and the practice of medicine by targeting new medical techniques for oversight and subjecting the continued use of those treatments to onerous and legally questionable regulatory requirements that hinder the use of those treatments in practice. …

Denying Death, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Terminal cancer patients are being kept in the dark about the purpose of their care. Several studies show that these patients undergo expensive and painful interventions because they are holding out hope for a cure, even when their physicians know that a cure is very unlikely. The current Medicare reimbursement system encourages this false hope by incentivizing physicians to medicate and operate on patients, rather than to talk about whether or why to do these things. Our culture also encourages this false hope by treating cancer as a war that must be won. As a result, patients are admitted to …

From Bibles To Biomarkers: The Future Of The Dsm And Forensic Psychiatric Diagnosis, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Given its importance to the law, it is regrettable that judges and lawyers do not fully understand how the DSM is constructed, and the bedrock of values on which it rests. As evidence of this, lawyers and judges often refer to the DSM as the “psychiatric bible.” This language is both fascinating and perplexing. This Article will attempt to correct the notion that the DSM is a legal “psychiatric bible” by explaining how it is created and used by the medical field. It will also provide a few reasons why the law may have come to view it as a …

Childhood, Interrupted: Encouraging The De-Institutionalization Of Utah's State Hospital, Sara Montoya

Utah OnLaw: The Utah Law Review Online Supplement

While boasting a culture that is rich in family and community values, Utah ought to be leading the way in developing and implementing a comprehensive and efficient system of care that protects children and families by placing tools within the home and the community to strengthen these core units of Utah society. Further, with the Utah State Hospital at the end of its physical lifespan, and a crippled economy requiring more budget pinching than ever, the timing is particularly conducive to taking these crucial steps forward. With these litigation tools, an advocacy group or family might be able to successfully …

Stateless Crimes, Legitimacy, And International Criminal Law: The Case Of Organ Trafficking, Leslie Francis, John Francis

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Organ trafficking—coercion for the purpose of removal of organs (United Nations 2000; GTZ 2004)—is recognized as a significant international problem. Yet unlike sex trafficking or trafficking in children, it is largely left out of international criminal law regimes and to some extent of domestic criminal law regimes as well. It does not come within the jurisdiction of the ICC, except in very special cases such as when it is conducted in a manner that conforms to the definitions of genocide or crimes against humanity. Although the United States Code characterizes trafficking as “a transnational crime with national implications,” (22 U.S.C. …