Law Commons^™

The Integrity Of Death: Resolving Dilemmas In Medicine, Larry I. Palmer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Nursing Home Residents And The New California Health Care Decisions Law, David M. English, Rebecca C. Morgan

Faculty Publications

This article explores issues involving advance directives made by nursing home residents, both prior to and during their stay in a facility, including the frequency of making directives, the reasons why residents fail to make directives, and the reasons why facilities often fail to honor them. Specifically, this article examines these issues in light of the 1999 California Health Care Decisions Law, effective July 1, 2000, and focuses on how this new statute can be used to empower nursing home residents, and adults more generally, to take control of decisions regarding their own health care.

Mental Health Advance Directives: Having One's Say?, Justine A. Dunlap

Faculty Publications

First, this Article traces the extension of the right to refuse treatment to the psychiatric realm. Next, the Article addresses advance directives for health care and their utility for mental health issues. Then, the Article examines state statutory and judicial responses to mental health advance directives. Finally, the Article analyzes why the right to control future psychiatric treatment, including the right to refuse treatment, has been slow to gain acceptance. Although mental health advance directives present real challenges, legally and otherwise, this Article concludes that they are firmly rooted in the law and their rejection is, more often than not, …

The Quiet Demise Of Deference To Custom: Malpractice Law At The Millenium, Philip G. Peters Jr.

Faculty Publications

According to conventional wisdom, tort law allows physicians to set their own standard of care. While defendants in ordinary tort actions are expected to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances, physicians traditionally have needed only to conform to the customs of their peers. However, judicial deference to physician customs is eroding. Gradually, quietly and relentlessly, state courts are withdrawing this legal privilege. Already, a dozen states have expressly rejected deference to medical customs and another nine, although not directly addressing the role of custom, have rephrased their standard of care in terms of the reasonable physician, rather than compliance with …

Informed Consent For Neonatal Circumcision: An Ethical And Legal Conundrum, J. Steven Svoboda, Robert S. Van Howe, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Beneficial And Unusual Punishment: An Argument In Support Of Prisoner Participation In Clinical Trials, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

Currently, approximately 1.8 million people are incarcerated in the United States at any given time. A disproportionately large percentage of the prisoner population has serious illnesses, such as AIDS and tuberculosis. Prisoners most often, however, are barred from participation in clinical trials, even when conventional therapy has failed, and experimental treatment might provide them with their only hope of survival.

Much of the reluctance to include prisoners in biomedical research is based on history. In the past, prisoners have been severely abused and even tortured in medical studies conducted in the Nazi death camps, Japanese prisoner camps, and correctional facilities …

More Sorry Than Safe: Assessing The Precautionary Principle And The Proposed International Biosafety Protocol, Jonathan H. Adler

Faculty Publications

Part I of this paper provides a brief overview of the development of biotechnology, its regulation and its use, with a particular emphasis on agricultural biotechnology. Part II outlines the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, which provides an international legal framework for a biosafety protocol and summarizes the results of recent protocol negotiations, such as those conducted in Cartagena, Colombia in February 1999, which continued in Montreal in January 2000. Part III explains why the proposed protocol embodies a variant of the precautionary principle and why such policies may do more harm than good. This paper concludes with some …