Law Commons^™

Access To Prescription Drugs: A Normative Economic Approach To Pharmacist Conscience Clause Legislation, Joanna K. Sax

Faculty Scholarship

The goals of this Article are two-fold: (1) to explain that pharmacist conscience clause legislation may be expanded to areas concerning controversial biomedical research; and (2) to demonstrate that welfare economics can be applied to analyze pharmacist conscience clause legislation. Regarding the first goal, the broad language of existing and proposed conscience clause legislation creates an umbrella that allows a pharmacist to escape liability for refusing to fill a prescription for almost any type of medication. With respect to the second goal, this Article applies welfare economics to demonstrate that pharmacist conscience clauses are a part of tort law and …

Surrogate Selection: An Increasingly Viable, But Limited, Solution To Intractable Futility Disputes, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

This article reviews the strengths and weaknesses of “surrogate selection” as a solution to intractable medical futility disputes. It concludes that while surrogate selection is an increasingly viable solution, it remains only a partial solution because it is often difficult or impossible to demonstrate that a surrogate demanding non-recommended end-of-life medical treatment is acting outside the scope of her authority.

Over the past twelve years, many states have been developing new legislative solutions to intractable medical futility disputes. The most widely-discussed solution empowers healthcare providers to unilaterally refuse patient- or surrogate-requested treatment that the provider deems inappropriate. In Texas, for …

The Politics Of Nature: Climate Change, Environmental Law, And Democracy, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Legal scholars’ discussions of climate change assume that the issue is one mainly of engineering incentives, and that “environmental values” are too weak, vague, or both to spur political action to address the emerging crisis. This Article gives reason to believe otherwise. The major natural resource and environmental statutes, from the acts creating national forests and parks to the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, have emerged from precisely the activity that discussions of climate change neglect: democratic argument over the value of the natural world and its role in competing ideas of citizenship, national purpose, and the role and …

Aligning Ethics With Medical Decision-Making: The Quest For Informed Patient Choice, Jaime S. King, Benjamin W. Moulton

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mediating Medical Malpractice Lawsuits: The Need For Plaintiff And Physician Participation, Chris Stern Hyman, Carol B. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

At this moment in history, tort reform and new approaches to resolving medical malpractice claims are part of the national debate about how to improve health care. Federal funding is available for pilot projects to test new approaches to medical malpractice litigation. There is increased pressure from health care regulators to disclose adverse events and communicate better with patients and their families. These all present opportunities to increase the use of mediation, particularly to address medical malpractice lawsuits and to improve patient safety.

For the past seven years, we have been studying ways in which mediation and mediation skills can …

Conditional Spending And Compulsory Maternity, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

More than 45 million Americans are uninsured, and even more are seeking government assistance accessing healthcare, rendering the conditions placed on government spending a timely and significant issue. Federal funding often demands a sacrifice of the recipient, meaning that Congress can condition the receipt of federal funds on certain statutory prerequisites. Given the demand to expand the nation's major public healthcare programs, it is important to reconsider the Supreme Court's Spending Clause jurisprudence. The Court's major decisions regarding conditional spending have facilitated a disconnect that analytically separates the individual from the conditional spending program, a divide that has allowed Congress …