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Full-Text Articles in Medical Jurisprudence
Narrative Capacity, James Toomey
Narrative Capacity, James Toomey
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
The doctrine of capacity is a fundamental threshold to the protections of private law. The law only recognizes private decision-making—from exercising the right to transfer or bequeath property and entering into a contract to getting married or divorced—made with the level of cognitive functioning that the capacity doctrine demands. When the doctrine goes wrong, it denies individuals, particularly older adults, access to basic private-law rights on the one hand and ratifies decision-making that may tear apart families and tarnish legacies on the other.
The capacity doctrine in private law is built on a fundamental philosophical mismatch. It is grounded in …
Criminal Acts And Basic Moral Equality, John A. Humbach
Criminal Acts And Basic Moral Equality, John A. Humbach
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Modern criminal justice presupposes that persons are not morally equal. On the contrary, those who do wrong are viewed by the law as less worthy of respect, concern and decent treatment: Offenders, it is said, “deserve” to suffer for their misdeeds. Yet, there is scant logical or empirical basis for the law's supposition that offenders are morally inferior. The usual reasoning is that persons who intentionally or knowingly do wrong are the authors and initiators of their acts and, as such, are morally responsible for them. But this reasoning rests on the assumption that a person's mental states, such as …