Law Commons^™

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 …

Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars And The Demise Of The Human Mediator, David Allen Larson

Faculty Scholarship

As technology has advanced, many have wondered whether (or simply when) artificial intelligent devices will replace the humans who perform complex, interactive, interpersonal tasks such as dispute resolution. Has science now progressed to the point that artificial intelligence devices can replace human mediators, arbitrators, dispute resolvers and problem solvers? Can humanoid robots, attractive avatars and other relational agents create the requisite level of trust and elicit the truthful, perhaps intimate or painful, disclosures often necessary to resolve a dispute or solve a problem? This article will explore these questions. Regardless of whether the reader is convinced that the demise of …

An Escape Route From The Medellin Maze, Anthony S. Winer

Faculty Scholarship

Many in the United States who follow international law have tracked the course of the Supreme Court's 2008 Medellin case' especially closely, both before and after the Court's issuance of the decision. The case concerned the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (the "Vienna Convention, "Convention" or "VCCR"), which imposes certain obligations on the authorities of a State Party when they imprison a national of another State Party. Among these duties is the obligation to inform the foreign prisoner that the Convention affords the prisoner the right to communicate, while in prison, with consular officials from the prisoner's home country. Authorities …

Acceptable Deviance And Property Rights, Mark A. Edwards

Faculty Scholarship

Compliance with - or deviance from - law is often dependent upon the law’s convergence with - or divergence from - normative sensibilities. Where the legality and social acceptability of behavior diverge, some deviance is socially acceptable. Property rights evolve in response to changes in normative sensibilities. Constructing a model of acceptable deviance and applying it to property rights, we can predict and actually observe the evolution of property rights in response to changes in normative sensibilities in areas as diverse as file-sharing, foreclosures, the use of public space, and fishing rights. We can also predict and observe stresses in …

The Accidental Elder Law Professor, A. Kimberley Dayton

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses my somewhat unusual and erratic path to becoming an Elder Law professor. My story, told more or less in chronological order, is a first-person narrative of one woman’s journey to achieve, if not academic renown, then at least personal satisfaction in the realm of the legal academy. It does not aspire to convey ponderous wisdom about the best way to teach Elder Law or the importance of scholarly productivity as a measure of one’s legitimacy. On the contrary, I hope the Article will illustrate that, in the same way the field of Elder Law has grown and …