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Full-Text Articles in Law
Constitutional Aspects Of Physician-Assisted Suicide After Lee V. Oregon, Simon Canick
Constitutional Aspects Of Physician-Assisted Suicide After Lee V. Oregon, Simon Canick
Faculty Scholarship
On November 8, 1994, Oregon voters narrowly passed the highly controversial Death with Dignity Act (Measure 16), which marked the first time that physician-assisted suicide was explicitly legalized anywhere in the world. In Lee v. Oregon, a group of physicians, several terminally ill persons, a residential care facility, and individual operators of residential care facilities sought to enjoin enforcement of the new law, claiming various constitutional infirmities. The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon enjoined enforcement of the law, acknowledging that it raised important constitutional issues including possible violations of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of …
Common Law Elements Of The Section 1983 Action, Jack M. Beermann
Common Law Elements Of The Section 1983 Action, Jack M. Beermann
Faculty Scholarship
This Article explores the role of the common law in Supreme Court interpretation and application of § 1983, which grants a cause of action for violations of constitutional rights committed "under color of any [state] statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage."' I argue that the common law has served primarily to narrow the reach of § 1983, and that this is inappropriate in light of the broad statutory language and the absence of good evidence that the enacting Congress intended a narrower application than the statutory language indicates.
Toward A Conceptual Framework For Assessing Police Power Commitment Legislation, Eric S. Janus
Toward A Conceptual Framework For Assessing Police Power Commitment Legislation, Eric S. Janus
Faculty Scholarship
Recent litigation and scholarship have begun to focus on the substantive limits of the state's power to use civil commitment as a social control tool. Courts and commentators describe civil commitment as grounded on two powers of the state: the parens patriae interest and the police power. This Article seeks an analytical framework for defining the boundaries of police power commitments in which justification rests on the interests of the public rather than on the interests of the committed individual.