Medical Jurisprudence Commons^™

Organizations As Evil Structures, Cary Federman, Dave Holmes

Cary Federman

Nursing practice in forensic psychiatry opens new horizons in nursing. This complex, professional, nursing practice involves the coupling of two contradictory socioprofessional mandates: to punish and to provide care. The purpose of this chapter is to present nursing practice in a disciplinary setting as a problem of governance. A Foucauldian perspective allows us to understand the way forensic psychiatric nursing is involved in the governance of mentally ill criminals through a vast array of power techniques (sovereign, disciplinary, and pastoral), which posit nurses as “subjects of power.” These nurses are also “objects of power” in that nursing practice is constrained …

Licensure Of Health Care Professionals: The Consumer's Case For Abolition, Charles H. Baron

Charles H. Baron

While state medical licensure laws ostensibly are intended to promote worthwhile goals, such as the maintenance of high standards in health care delivery, this Article argues that these laws in practice are detrimental to consumers. The Article takes the position that licensure contributes to high medical care costs and stifles competition, innovation and consumer autonomy. It concludes that delicensure would expand the range of health services available to consumers and reduce patient dependency, and that these developments would tend to make medical practice more satisfying to consumers and providers of health care services.

Energy And Environment Policy Case For A Global Project, Thomas A. Faunce

Thomas A Faunce

A policy case is made for a global project on artificial photosynthesis including its scientific justification, potential governance structure and funding mechanisms.

Governing Planetary Nanomedicine: Environmental Sustainability And A Unesco Universal Declaration On The Bioethics And Human Rights Of Natural And Artificial Photosynthesis (Global Solar Fuels And Foods)., Thomas A. Faunce

Thomas A Faunce

Environmental and public health-focused sciences are increasingly characterised as constituting an emerging discipline—planetary medicine. From a governance perspective, the ethical components of that discipline may usefully be viewed as bestowing upon our ailing natural environment the symbolic moral status of a patient. Such components emphasise, for example, the origins and content of professional and social virtues and related ethical principles needed to promote global governance systems and policies that reduce ecological stresses and pathologies derived from human overpopulation, selfishness and greed— such as pollution, loss of biodiversity, deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as provide necessary energy, water and …

A Bad Trip For Health-Related Human Rights: Implications Of Momcilovic V The Queen (2011) 85 Aljr 957, Tim Vines, Thomas A. Faunce

Thomas A Faunce

Momcilovic v The Queen (2011) 85 ALJR 957 [PDF] ; [2011] HCA 34 arose from a prosecution for drug trafficking brought under the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981 (Vic) . The Australian High Court held that the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic) (the Charter) validly conferred a power on the Victorian Supreme Court and Court of Appeal to interpret legislation in a manner consistent with a defined list of human rights. By a slim majority it also held that the Charter validly created a judicial power to "declare" a law inconsistent with one or …

Challenges To Australia’S National Health Policy From Trade And Investment Agreements, Thomas A. Faunce

Thomas A Faunce

Recent federal trade policy commitments concerning the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations (against changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and against inclusion of an investor state provision) could protect Australia’s tobacco control legislation and Australia's sovereign capacity to regulate public health and environmental policy

A Bridle, A Prod And A Big Stick: An Evaluation Of Class Actions, Shareholder Proposals And The Ultra Vires Doctrine As Methods For Controlling Corporate Behavior, Adam Sulkowski, Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Written for the recent conference at St. John’s University Law School on “People of Color, Women, and the Public Corporation,” this paper evaluates recently applied methods of influencing corporate behavior on employment practices and recommends that a dormant legal doctrine be revitalized and added to the “tool box” of activists and concerned shareholders. The methods of influencing corporate behavior that are evaluated include class action lawsuits and shareholder proposals to amend corporate policy. In both contexts, there are procedural hurdles to achieving success. Even when success is achieved, there are limits to the actual changes in organizational behavior that result. …

Global Artificial Photosynthesis: A Scientific And Legal Introduction., Thomas A. Faunce

Thomas A Faunce

With the global human population set to exceed 10 billion by 2050, its collective energy consumption to rise from 400 to over 500 EJ/yr and with the natural environment under increasing pressure from these sources as well as from anthropogenic climate change, political solutions such as the creation of an efficient carbon price and trading scheme may arrive too late. In this context, the scientific community is exploring technological remedies. Central to these options is artificial photosynthesis – the creation, particularly through nanotechnology, of devices capable to doing what plants have done for millions of years – transforming sunlight, water …

Third Party Access And Refusal To Deal In European Energy Networks: How Sector Regulation And Competition Law Meet Each Other, Michael Diathesopoulos

Michael Diathesopoulos

In this paper, we will analyse the issue of concurrence between competition and sector rules and the relation between parallel concepts within the two different legal frameworks. We will firstly examine Third Party Access in relation to essential facilities doctrine and refusal of access and we will identify the common points and objectives of these concepts and the extent to which they provide a context to each other’s implementation. Second, we will focus on how Commission uses sector regulation and objectives as a context within the process of implementation of competition law in the energy sector and third, we will …

Impact Of The Australia-Us Free Trade Agreement On Australian Medicines Regulation And Prices, Thomas A. Faunce, James Bai, Duy Nguyen

Thomas A Faunce

The Australia – United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) came into force on 1 January 2005. Before and subsequently to the AUSFTA being concluded, controversy surrounded the debate over its impact on Australia ’ s health policy, specifically on regulation of pharmaceutical patents and Australia ’ s cost-effectiveness system relating to prescription medicine prices known as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). This article examines the expectations of both parties in the pharmaceutical sector with regard to the AUSFTA, as well as how successfully they were achieved. It seeks to analyse important relevant outcomes for regulators, the public and pharmaceutical industry, …

Afflicting The Comfortable: An Assessment Of The Stasis In International Bioethical Discourse, Sam Grey

Sam Grey

Despite decades of clinical research being carried out in the 'developing' world, neither the socio-political and economic context of the global South, nor the nature and historical trajectory of global inequality have played a substantive role in determining the nature and extent of North-to-South bioethical obligations. Instead, context has been used to vacate obligation, shut out theories of justice, and collapse the “four principles' of bioethics” – sacrosanct in the 'developed’ world - into a singular, non-negotiable focus on autonomy as a procedurally-defined right. Proponents of a minimum-standards system of international clinical research conflate scientific, statistical, economic, and ethical issues, …

Mental Health Parity Laws, Louis Graham, Kisha Braithwaite

Louis F Graham

Policy Challenges From The "White" Senate Inquiry Into Workplace-Related Health Impacts Of Toxic Dusts And Nanoparticles, Thomas A. Faunce, Haydn Walters, Trevor Williams, David Bryant, Martin Jennings, Bill Musk

Thomas A Faunce

On 22 June 2005 the Senate of the Commonwealth of Australia voted to establish an inquiry into workplace harm related to toxic dust and emerging technologies (including nanoparticles). The inquiry became known as the "White" Inquiry after Mr Richard White, a financially uncompensated sufferer of industrial sandblasting-induced lung disease who was instrumental in its establishment. The "White" Inquiry delivered its final report and recommendations on 31 May 2006. This paper examines whether these recommendations and their implementation may provide a unique opportunity not only to modernize relevant monitoring standards and processes, but related compensation systems for disease associated with workplace-related …