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Full-Text Articles in Law
Life And Death Decision-Making: Judges V. Legislators As Sources Of Law In Bioethics, Charles Baron
Life And Death Decision-Making: Judges V. Legislators As Sources Of Law In Bioethics, Charles Baron
Charles H. Baron
In some situations, courts may be better sources of new law than legislatures. Some support for this proposition is provided by the performance of American courts in the development of law regarding the “right to die.” When confronted with the problems presented by mid-Twentieth Century technological advances in prolonging human life, American legislators were slow to act. It was the state common law courts, beginning with Quinlan in 1976, that took primary responsibility for gradually crafting new legal principles that excepted withdrawal of life-prolonging treatment from the application of general laws dealing with homicide and suicide. These courts, like the …
Competency And Common Law: Why And How Decision-Making Capacity Criteria Should Be Drawn From The Capacity-Determination Process, Charles Baron
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
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.
Blood Transfusions, Jehovah’S Witnesses, And The American Patients’ Rights Movement, Charles Baron
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.
Life And Death Decision-Making: Judges V. Legislators As Sources Of Law In Bioethics, Charles Baron
Life And Death Decision-Making: Judges V. Legislators As Sources Of Law In Bioethics, Charles Baron
Charles H. Baron
In some situations, courts may be better sources of new law than legislatures. Some support for this proposition is provided by the performance of American courts in the development of law regarding the “right to die.” When confronted with the problems presented by mid-Twentieth Century technological advances in prolonging human life, American legislators were slow to act. It was the state common law courts, beginning with Quinlan in 1976, that took primary responsibility for gradually crafting new legal principles that excepted withdrawal of life-prolonging treatment from the application of general laws dealing with homicide and suicide. These courts, like the …
Competency And Common Law: Why And How Decision-Making Capacity Criteria Should Be Drawn From The Capacity-Determination Process, Charles Baron
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.