Law Commons^™

Mediation At The End Of Life: Getting Beyond The Limits Of The Talking Cure, Thaddeus Mason Pope, Ellen A. Waldman

Faculty Scholarship

Mediation has been touted as the magic band-aid to solve end-of-life conflicts. When families and health care providers clash at the end of life, bioethicists and conflict theorists alike have seized upon mediation as the perfect procedural balm. Dissonant values, tragic choices, and roiling grief and loss would be confronted, managed, and soothed during the emotional alchemy of the mediation process. But what is happening in a significant subset of end-of-life disputes is not mediation as we traditionally understand it. Mediation's allure stems from its promise to excavate underlying needs and interests, identify common ground, and push disputants toward more …

Medical Futility Statutes: No Safe Harbor To Unilaterally Refuse Life-Sustaining Treatment, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past fifteen years, a majority of states have enacted medical futility statutes that permit a health care provider to refuse a patient's request for life-sustaining medical treatment. These statutes typically permit the provider to unilaterally stop LSMT where it would not provide significant benefit or would be contrary to generally accepted health care standards. But these safe harbors are vague and imprecise. Consequently, providers have been reluctant to utilize these medical futility statutes.

This uncertainty probably cannot be reduced. Consensus on substantive measures of medical inappropriateness has proven unachievable. Only a purely process-based approach like that outlined in …