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In The Tribunal Of Conscience: Mills V. Wyman Reconsidered, Geoffrey R. Watson Jan 1997

In The Tribunal Of Conscience: Mills V. Wyman Reconsidered, Geoffrey R. Watson

Scholarly Articles

In this Article, Professor Watson explores the historical record surrounding Mills v. Wyman, 20 Mass (3 Pick) 207 (1825), one of the leading American cases on moral obligation in contract law. In Mills, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court refused to enforce a father's promise to compensate a Good Samaritan who had cared for the father's dying son. Professor Watson combs the historical evidence--court records, census reports, genealogical data, probate records, military rolls, and so on-and argues that the Mills court got both the facts and the law wrong. According to Professor Watson, the father did not make the promise in …


The Failure Of The Freedom-Based And Utlilitarian Arguments For Assisted Suicide, Scott T. Fitzgibbon Dec 1996

The Failure Of The Freedom-Based And Utlilitarian Arguments For Assisted Suicide, Scott T. Fitzgibbon

Scott T. FitzGibbon

In recent years, numerous initiatives have been launched to promote physician-assisted suicide. Numerous statutes have been proposed, and one (in Oregon) has been enacted. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit were recently persuaded to recognize constitutionally protected rights to assisted suicide, although their decisions have been reversed by the Supreme Court. An international organization called the World Federation of Right-to-Die Societies furthers such efforts in other countries. The two most common justifications for such initiatives are that assisted suicide enhances freedom or liberty, and that …