Digital Commons Network^™

Through The Looking Glass Of Ethics And The Wrong With Rights We Find There, Susan P. Koniak

Faculty Scholarship

An ethic that imposes strong obligations to protect those who are most powerful and capable of protecting themselves and weak obligations to protect the powerless and most vulnerable is wrong. I take it this first proposition is self-evident, at least for those of us who still feel comfortable speaking of right and wrong. For those more comfortable speaking of "efficiency" and "inefficiency," the inefficiency of such an ethical system should similarly be self-evident.

Business Vs. Medical Ethics: Conflicting Standards For Managed Care, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

The increased competition for a share of the market of insured patients, which arose in the wake of failed comprehensive health care reform, has provoked questions about what, if any, standards will govern new “competitive” health care organizations. Managed care arrangements, which typically shift to providers and patients some or all of the financial risk for patient care, are of special concern because they can create incentives to withhold beneficial care from patients. Of course, fee-for-service (FFS) medical practice creates incentives to provide unnecessary services, and managed care can avoid that type of harm. Still, as Edmund Pellegrino has noted, …

Rationing Health Care And The Need For Credible Scarcity: Why American's Can't Say No, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

With adequate cost containment unlikely in the foreseeable future, health care use will have to be curtailed, ideally with open and explicit criteria for equitably allocating resources or rationing. Yet, consensus on any such criteria appears remote because Americans cannot say no to health care. Americans may refuse to accept rationing for two reasons. The absence of any global limitation on health care resources may encourage patients to believe that health care resources are not scarce and do not need to be rationed. A belief in vitalism--that everyone is morally entitled to unlimited longevity and good health--may discourage setting limits …

Foreword: A Recipe For Effecting Institutional Changes To Achieve Privatization, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

Symposium A Recipe for Effecting Institutional Changes to Achieve Privatization

Of the many questions raised by privatization, this mini-conference will focus on the "how" in different countries: developed and developing, Western countries and the Eastern bloc (including China), emphasizing methodology and cultural traits. Clearly, the "how" will differ in fundamental aspects depending on the political and economic conditions of countries in which the process is taking place

The focus on the "how," however, does not mean that we will not consider other important questions that the movement to privatize raises. The papers presented in this mini-conference reflect a wide range …

Against The Peace And Dignity Of The State: Spousal Violence And Spousal Privilege, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Every indictment in Texas ends with the phrase, "[a]gainst the peace and dignity of the State." This phrase is in recognition of the fact that crimes are not purely personal matters between a defendant and a victim, but are offenses against society as a whole. By enacting changes to its spousal privilege statute, Texas has an opportunity to demonstrate that domestic violence offends the peace and dignity of the state.

Colloquium - Gender, Law And Health Care: New Perspectives For Teaching And Scholarship: The Role Of Gender In Law And Health Care, Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Review Of "Constitutional Torts" By Sheldon H. Nahmod, Michael L. Wells, Thomas A. Eaton, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The most interesting issues in the field of constitutional torts, involving the legal and moral bases for the government's responsibility for injuries it causes, are the most difficult ones for lawyers to explore. The question whether, as a moral or social policy matter, governments and government officials should enjoy immunities or other defenses not available to private individuals is rarely confronted directly in judicial opinions or in scholarship on constitutional torts, yet it lurks behind many of the doctrinal issues that come up in constitutional tort litigation.¹ A slight scratch on the surface of doctrines as disparate as official …

Nunn-Domenici And Nonprofits, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

Context determines the meaning of legal rules, especially tax rules. The Nunn-Domenici proposal to restructure the U.S. income tax system on consumption tax lines (S. 722, 104th Cong.) will have an impact on nonprofits that provides an illustration of this principle.

A Study In Regulatory Method, Local Political Cultures, And Jurisprudential Voice: The Application Of Federal Confidentiality Law To Project Head Start, Richard C. Boldt

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Galaxy Selection And The Surface Brightness Distribution, Stacy S. Mcgaugh

Faculty Scholarship

Optical surveys for galaxies are biased against the inclusion of low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies. Disney [Nature, 263, 573 (1976)] suggested that the constancy of disk central surface brightness noticed by Freeman [ApJ, 160, 811 (1970)] was not a physical result, but instead was an artifact of sample selection. Since LSB galaxies do exist, the pertinent and still controversial issue is if these newly discovered galaxies constitute a significant percentage of the general galaxy population. In this paper, we address this issue by determining the space density of galaxies as a function of disk central surface brightness. Using the physically …

The New Maryland Rules Of Evidence: Survey, Analysis And Critique, Alan D. Hornstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Evolution And Available Actions For Recovery In Cultural Property Claims, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

United States laws regarding antiquities are not settled, but an historic legal overview provides some guidance to the direction of cultural property claims. These laws gain importance with the realization that art is second only to narcotics in worldwide illegally trafficked items. Furthermore, there is an abundance of disputed cultural property within legitimate interests, such as museums and personal collections. Thus, before taking an overview of current legal protections, it may be helpful to briefly examine two current controversies.

House Passess Unbalanced Clean Water Act, Denise D. Fort

Faculty Scholarship

The Clean Water Act and the associated state statutes and regulations provide the framework for New Mexico's regulation (and nonregulation) of our rivers and streams. Both the federal and state laws need improvement if they are to work in New Mexico. As readers of The Green Fire Report well know, the "improvements" contemplated by the new Congress are unlikely to improve our water. H.R. 961, the House bill recently passed by the House, is simply unacceptable. President Clinton has indicated that he will veto the bill as passed by the House. Your efforts are needed to contact your federal legislators …

The Fourth Amendment's Forcing Of Flawed Choices: Giving Content To Freedom For Residents Of Public Housing - Pratt V. Chicago Housing Authority, 848 F. Supp. 792 (N.D. Ill. 1994), Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

In April 1994, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued a preliminary injunction halting the "Operation Clean Sweep" program operated by the Chicago Housing Authority ("CHA"). ³ The court did so over the protestations of some of those most affected, the public housing residents subjected to the CHA's searches. ⁴ Pratt v. Chicago Housing Authority⁵ attracted the attention of the nation and President William Clinton, who requested that the Justice Department investigate ways to strengthen security in public housing without offending the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

Civil libertarians applauded …

Experimental Probes Of Bond Orientational Order Models Of Blue Phase Iii Of Chiral Liquid Crystals, Hua Zhong, Rolfe G. Petschek

Faculty Scholarship

Recently, a cubic bond orientational order model was proposed for blue phase (BP) III [Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 2757 (1993)]. It was suggested that in blue phase III, although there is no periodic translational symmetry, a cubic orientational order persists. A spatially independent fourth-rank tensor Bαβμν4 was used to describe the cubic bond orientational order. In this paper, we show that since BP III is chiral, the bond orientational order parameter is expected to vary in space. Depending on the relative magnitudes of the elastic constants in the free energy, the cubic bond orientational order will twist along either a …

Elizabeth's Story: Exploring Power Imbalances In Divorce Mediation, Scott H. Hughes

Faculty Scholarship

Case study of many spouses who enter the divorce process with severe deficits in their abilities to deal with the emotional, economic, intellectual, and logistical issues which arise. Mediation may not be adviseable when there is an inequality of bargaining power due to abuse, inexperience, ignorance, socialization and/or the grieving process.

Paying Attention To The Signs, Susan P. Koniak, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

After all our efforts and all Keck's money, where are we? Some good has been accomplished. By committing its resources to the study of legal ethics, the W.M. Keck Foundation has encouraged law schools to pay attention to a subject all too often ignored. That itself is good. The money has made things happen. Schools have held conferences devoted to legal ethics that otherwise would not have been held;¹ schools have experimented with teaching programs in legal ethics that otherwise might have been left untried;' members of the practicing bar have had conversations and debates with academics about the …

Mandatory Prelicensure Legal Internship: A Renewed Plea For Its Implementation In Light Of The Maccrate Report, Stephen R. Alton

Faculty Scholarship

Since its publication in 1992, virtually everyone who has any opinion about American legal education has been talking about the Mac- Crate Report. Relatively few among this multitude seem actually to have read the report itself. The purpose of this essay is to present an overview of this thoughtful document, along with some thoughts of my own regarding its implications for the future of legal education, particularly its implications for a mandatory prelicensure legal internship.

Purification Of A Variant-Specific Surface Protein Of Giardia Lamblia And Characterization Of Its Metal-Binding Properties, Mark R. Chance

Faculty Scholarship

Giardia lamblia, an intestinal parasite of humans and other vertebrates, undergoes surface antigenic variation by modulating the expression of different variant-specific surface proteins (VSP). VSPs are cysteine-rich surface proteins that bind zinc and other heavy metals in vitro. We developed an immunoaffinity chromatographic method to purify a VSP in order to determine its biochemical properties. The sequences of two different proteolytic fragments agreed with the sequence deduced from the cloned gene, and amino-terminal sequence indicated the removal of a 14-residue signal peptide, consistent with the transport of VSP to the cell surface. The protein is not glycosylated and has an …

The Tax Treatment Of Limited Liability Companies: Law In Search Of Policy, Daniel S. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Responsibility, Causation, And The Harm-Benefit Line In Takings Jurisprudence, Glynn S. Lunney Jr

Faculty Scholarship

As one of the guarantees provided in the Bill of Rights, the Fifth Amendment's Compensation Clause restricts government's otherwise largely plenary power over privately-held property rights. While the Compensation Clause does not directly limit government's ability to change, modify, or even eliminate existing privately-held property rights, in certain instances it circumscribes government's ability to force individual property owners to bear the cost of such government-imposed changes. Specifically, for those government-imposed property redistributions found to be "takings" within the meaning of the Compensation Clause, the Fifth Amendment requires federal and state governments to compensate the property holder for the taking, and …

What Can The Irs Compel Charities To Say To Donors, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

The 1993 tax act created new substantiation and reporting requirements for charitable giving. One of the new provisions, section 6115, requires a charity to make specified disclosures to the donor. If the charity receives a "quid pro quo contribution" of more than $75 it must inform the donor that the amount of the charitable contribution excludes the value of goods or services the donor received. The charity must provide a good-faith estimate of the value of the goods or services. If the charity fails to comply, it may incur a penalty, section 6714, of $10 per contribution, but not more …

Genetic Information And Health Insurance: State Legislative Approaches, Karen H. Rothenberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Roundtable: Fogerty V. Fantasy, Inc. And Campbell V. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., Beryl R. Jones-Woodin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Feminist Legal Theories, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The issue before this panel is one of identification. What epistemologically justifies attaching to an idea or set of ideas the label "feminist legal theory"? In other words, how can one recognize an example of feminist legal theory if and when one comes across it?

Its Time For A State Environmental Policy Act, Denise D. Fort

Faculty Scholarship

What single law should be the first step in protecting New Mexico's environment from the consequences of our cascading population? My nomination would go to a State Environmental Policy Act, commonly called a "state NEPA." These laws are on one level very simple, requiring only that state governments "stop and think" before taking actions with significant environmental costs. After twenty-five years of experience with the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), however, we know that a law that allows citizens input into governmental action has a profound effect on governmental action.

Percus-Yevick Approximation For Fluids With Spontaneous Partial Order, Hua Zhong, Rolfe G. Petschek

Faculty Scholarship

In this paper we present a Percus-Yevick approximation which can be applied to a system in which a phase transition has occurred, resulting in spontaneous breaking of a continuous symmetry and partial spontaneous order. Previous methods have allowed calculations only for molecules which are in the isotropic phase or all perfectly aligned. For the orientationally disordered isotropic phase, our technique gives identical results to previous work. The appropriate treatment for systems with spontaneously broken continuous symmetry has been appreciated for some time in the magnetic and field theoretic literature. We adapt these treatments to the anisotropic fluid system with a …

Nonprofit Hospital Mergers And Section 7 Of The Clayton Act: Closing An Antitrust Loophole, Laura L. Stephens

Faculty Scholarship

Nonprofit hospitals developed out of the charitable hospital movement, which began in the mid-nineteenth century.' The early voluntary hospitals depended upon local benefactors for financing.² Originally conceived as charitable institutions providing long-term care, these hospitals began to change their focus around the turn of the century.³ A changed mission-providing care to all rather than just poor inpatients with chronic problems-required the latest medical technology.⁴ This in turn demanded increased construction of up-to-date facilities, as well as large operating expenses.

Recent years have seen further pressure on hospital budgets, as the health-care sector of the economy has become …

The "Straight Mind" In Russ’S The Female Man, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

In The Female Man Russ contrasts our present-day heterosexual society with two revolutionary alternatives: a utopian world of women and a dystopian world of women warring with men. The novel functions as what Monique Wittig calls a "literary war machine" because it tries "to pulverize the old forms and formal conventions." Specifically, Russ critiques the "straight mind"—heterosexual institutions that regulate gender—by showing how two representatives from "our world" respond to those institutions. She also shows two alternative worlds that further undermine, but do not solve, the way heterosexual institutions regulate gender.

In responding to the straight mind and to the …

Human Rights Environmentalism: Forging Common Ground, Gabriel Eckstein, Miriam Gitlin

Faculty Scholarship

Since the early 1970s, the international community has widely acknowledged the nexus between human rights and environmental protection. References to this association and even to a human right to some minimal quality of environment, can be found in numerous international instruments. The Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, for example, proclaims that human beings have the "fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being." Similarly, the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights states that "everyone shall have the right to live …