Law Commons^™

Regulatory Competitive Shelters, Yaniv Heled

Yaniv Heled

This Article identifies an array of seemingly disparate federal exclusivity regimes as belonging to an increasingly prevalent and relatively new class of highly valuable government benefits, which it names “regulatory competitive shelters” (RCSs). It characterizes RCSs and distinguishes them from other, more traditional kinds of government-instituted properties. The Article then proceeds to describe a particular brand of RCSs established in federal statutory frameworks whose aim—much like patents—is to create incentives for technological innovation. Identifying several common motifs of such RCS regimes, the Article offers a taxonomy of these RCSs and describes the mechanisms by which RCSs instituted under such regimes …

Public Distribution System Reforms And Consumption In Chhattisgarh: A Comparative Empirical Analysis, Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, Sharad Tandon

Prasad Krishnamurthy

Chhattisgarh’s Public Delivery System (PDS) reforms have been lauded as a model for the National Food Security Act and for other states to emulate. Previous research has shown that PDS rice consumption increased in Chhattisgarh following reforms by the Raman Singh government that began in 2004. However, one third of PDS rice consumption growth in Chhattisgarh from 1999/2000 to 2009/2010 took place before 2004. This magnitude is over 70 percent when growth is measured relative to comparison regions that undertook no reforms. This finding suggests that the pre-2004 reforms to Fair Price Shop (FPS) ownership and state procurement by the …

Breathe Deeply: The Tort Of Smokers' Battery, Irene Scharf

Irene Scharf

This Article explores the long and faltering history of attempts to impose liability on tobacco product manufactures. Part II traces the manufacturers' historical and current actions of targeting youth through both promotions and deceptive advertising. Part III argues in favor of an expanded cause of action against the manufacturers for the intentional tort of battery. Part IV discusses the prospect of awards of punitive damages in these cases, and the Epilogue summarizes other advantages of the battery cause of action.

Bioethics And Law In The United States: A Legal Process Perspective, Charles Baron

Charles H. Baron

An analytical exposition of the law regarding a patient's "right to die" as it has developed in the United States over the last 30 years provides an exemplar overview of the variety of legal mechanisms that American legal institutions can and do bring to bear to deal with the challenges posed by new developments in medicine and the biosciences. Opposing "pro-life" and "pro-choice" ideological and political forces have been channeled through the federal and state legislative, judicial, and executive branches, where the various legal actors have developed legal principles that so far provide patients with a right to refuse any …

The Dialogue Between Biomedicine And Law In An “Intraamerican Transnational Perspective”, Charles Baron

Charles H. Baron

No abstract provided.

Competency And Common Law: Why And How Decision-Making Capacity Criteria Should Be Drawn From The Capacity-Determination Process, Charles Baron

Charles H. Baron

Determining competence to request physician-assisted suicide should be no more difficult than determining competence to refuse life-prolonging treatment. In both cases, criteria and procedures should be developed out of the process of actually making capacity determinations; they should not be promulgated a priori. Because patient demeanor plays a critical role in capacity determinations, it should be made part of the record of such determinations through greater use of video- and audiotapes.

Hastening Death: The Seven Deadly Sins Of The Status Quo, Charles Baron

Charles H. Baron

The seven deadly sins of the status quo -- inhumanity, paternalism, Utilitarianism, hypocrisy, lawlessness, injustice, and the deadly risk of error and abuse -- are seven arguments against maintaining the artificial bright-line distinction between the prohibition against assisted suicide and the allowance of patients’ right to refuse life-prolonging treatment. This article calls on courts and legislatures to follow the successful example of the Oregon Death with Dignity statute.

“Inherently Bad, And Bad Only”: A History Of State-Level Regulation Of Cigarettes And Smoking In The United States Since The 1880s. Volume 1: An In-Depth National Study Embedding Ultra-Thick Description Of A Representative State (Iowa), Marc Linder

Marc Linder

This book lays out empirical and methodological underpinnings for studying the early period of anti-cigarette legislation in the United States by overcoming the lack of primary source-based historical scholarship. Constantly repeating wildly erroneous claims at second, third, and more remote hand, anti-smoking academics and pro-tobacco apologists have fundamentally distorted history, on the one hand by dismissing the early anti-cigarette movement as merely religiously and morally motivated and the legislation it secured as unenforced exercises bereft of historical relevance, and, on the other by absurdly magnifying its achievements. Reconstruction of the national scope of the real course of the passage and …

Blood Transfusions, Jehovah’S Witnesses, And The American Patients’ Rights Movement, Charles Baron

Charles H. Baron

The litigation to protect Jehovah’s Witnesses from unwanted blood transfusions, which their theology considers a violation of the biblical prohibition against drinking blood, has produced important changes in both the right to refuse treatment and in the preferred treatment methods of all patients. This article traces the evolution of the rights of competent medical patients in the United States to refuse medical treatment. It also discusses the impact this litigation has had on the medical community’s realization that blood transfusions were neither as safe nor as medically necessary as medical culture posited.

Mother Earth And Uncle Sam: How Pollution And Hollow Government Hurt Our Kids, Rena Steinzor

Rena I. Steinzor

In this compelling study, Rena Steinzor highlights the ways in which the government, over the past twenty years, has failed to protect children from harm caused by toxic chemicals. She believes these failures—under-funding, excessive and misguided use of cost/benefit analysis, distortion of science, and devolution of regulatory authority—have produced a situation in which harm that could be reduced or eliminated instead persists.

Steinzor states that, as a society, we are neglecting our children's health to an extent that we would find unthinkable as individual parents, primarily due to the erosion of the government's role in protecting public health and the …

Competency And Common Law: Why And How Decision-Making Capacity Criteria Should Be Drawn From The Capacity-Determination Process, Charles Baron

Charles H. Baron

Determining competence to request physician-assisted suicide should be no more difficult than determining competence to refuse life-prolonging treatment. In both cases, criteria and procedures should be developed out of the process of actually making capacity determinations; they should not be promulgated a priori. Because patient demeanor plays a critical role in capacity determinations, it should be made part of the record of such determinations through greater use of video- and audiotapes.