Law Commons^™

Jurisgenerative Tissues: Sociotechnical Imaginaries And The Legal Secretions Of 3d Bioprinting, Roxanne Mykitiuk, Joshua Shaw

Articles & Book Chapters

Three-dimensional ‘bioprinting’ is under development, which may produce living human organs and tissues to be surgically implanted in patients. Like tissue engineering and regenerative medicine generally, the process of bioprinting potentially disrupts experience of the human body by redefining understandings of, and becoming actualised in new practices and regimes in relation to, the body. The authors consider how these novel sociotechnical imaginaries may emerge, having regard to law’s contribution to, as well as its possible transformation by, the process of 3D bioprinting. The authors draw on Gilbert Simondon and corporeal, material feminists to account for these disruptions as ‘ontogenetic,’ in …

The Neuroscience Of Trauma Supports Diminished Capacity As A Nuanced Approach To The Icc Case Of An Ex-Child Soldier, Lee Hiromoto, Ramail Siddiqui, Landy F. Sparr

JCLC Online

The 2021 conviction of former child soldier Dominic Ongwen by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes committed as an adult commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda raises questions about the ICC’s approach to mental illness.  During his trial, the defendant unsuccessfully raised defenses of insanity and duress, based on his kidnapping into the militant group as a child.  The court rejected not only those defenses, but also the claim that he had mental illness at all, in spite of his traumatic childhood.  Integrating scientific research, we argue that both the ICC and the defense failed to …

Flint Michigan Drinking Water Crisis, J. David Aiken

Cornhusker Economics

Briefly covers the Flint, Michigan drinking water crisis including providing some background, a timeline of events, and key takeaways from the perspective of public policy.

This article was originally prepared for distribution to students in Aiken's AECN 357 environmental and natural resources law course.

Corruption In Capsules: How It Is Legal For Companies To Put Harmful Ingredients In Vitamins And Dietary Supplements, Emily Leggiero

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

The vitamin and supplement industry has increased exponentially in profits as well as potential products on the market since the turn of the century. However, these products are not regulated, nor do they undergo any premarket clinical research or testing. Public health is compromised by vitamins and supplements that are available for American consumption that is disproportionately unregulated to their chemically similar counterparts. This wicked problem is facilitated through the combination of historical legislative definitions that has since been distorted for corrupt administrative gain through the allotment of corporate expenditures. Company disbursements are made to the same policymakers that create …

FacebookʼS Latest Attempt To Address Vaccine Misinformation — And Why ItʼS Not Enough, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

On October 13, 2020 Facebook announced the adoption of a series of measures to promote vaccine trust “while prohibiting ads with misinformation that could harm public health efforts.” In the post written by Kang-Xing Jin (head of health) and Rob Leathern (director of product management), the company explained that the new measures were designed with an emphasis on encouraging widespread use of this yearʼs flu vaccine, as well as in anticipation of potential COVID-19 vaccines becoming available in the near future.

The changes focus mainly on the establishment of a multiprong informational campaign about the seasonal flu vaccine, which includes …

Las Perspectivas Y Experiencias De Los Profesionales Del Campo De La Reproducción Asistida En La Ciudad Autónoma De Buenos Aires Y Bahía Blanca En El Año 2020. / The Perspectives And Experiences Of The Professionals In The Field Of Assisted Reproduction In The Autonomous City Of Buenos Aires And Bahía Blanca In 2020., Calder Hollond

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

En este informe se realiza una exploración del campo de la reproducción asistida en Argentina en 2020 a través de entrevistas personales con seis profesionales en el campo. Estos profesionales vienen de Capital Federal y Bahía Blanca y ofrecen perspectivas diversas en el estado del campo en este momento, los cambios que han pasado en los últimos años, y una mirada hacia el futuro. Este informe utiliza una metodología cualitativa y exploratoria, y un diseño observacional transversal. Además, emplea una muestra no probabilística y un diseño descriptivo para introducir el tema de reproducción asistida en Argentina y después analizarlo a …

Regulating Physician-Assisted Suicide, Colm O'Connor

Online Blog

No abstract provided.

The Reemergence Of Vaccine Nationalism, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

This short essay explores the reemergence of vaccine nationalism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The essay traces the pre-COVID origins of vaccine nationalism and explains how it can have detrimental effects on equitable access to newly developed vaccines.

The Enhanced Danger Of Physicians’ Off-Label Prescribing, Doriane Lambelet Coleman, Philip M. Rosoff

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a major challenge to both technologically advanced and resource-poor countries. There are currently no effective treatments for severe disease other than supportive care and advanced life support measures, including the use of mechanical ventilators. With the urgency and necessity bred from desperation, there have been many calls to utilize unproven therapies, such as hydroxychloroquine, for which little evidence of efficacy exists. We have previously argued that such off-label use, while legal, is problematic (and even dangerous) and have suggested several regulatory remedies that could protect patients and advance their interests while preserving the reasonable authority of …

Law, Structural Racism, And The Covid-19 Pandemic, Ruqaiijah Yearby, Seema Mohapatra

All Faculty Scholarship

Racial and ethnic minorities have always been the most impacted by pandemics because of: disparities in exposure to the virus; disparities in susceptibility to contracting the virus; and disparities in treatment. This article explains how structural racism, the ways in which laws are used to advantage the majority and disadvantage racial and ethnic minorities, has caused these disparities. Specifically, this article focuses on how employment, housing, health care, and COVID-19 relief laws have been manipulated to disadvantage racial and ethnic minorities, making minorities more susceptible to COVID-19 infection and death. This article uses Blumenshine’s 2008 framework to outline how structural …

The Problem With Relying On Profit-Driven Models To Produce Pandemic Drugs, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

The longstanding problems of relying on a market response to a pandemic are becoming readily apparent in the United States, which has quickly become the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. The problems are particularly pronounced in pharmaceutical markets, where we are pinning our hopes for both cures and vaccines. In previous work we have shown how characteristics of healthcare markets in the United States create a divergence between the private incentives of for-profit companies and public health needs, leading to sub-optimal health outcomes in what is a uniquely market-driven healthcare system. In this Essay, written as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, …

PortugalʼS Response To Covid-19, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay for the Regulatory Review's special series on Comparing Nations’ Responses to COVID-19 examines the early response to the pandemic in Portugal. The essay focuses on measures adopted in connection with the declarations of state of emergency and state of calamity, as well as the treatment of migrant populations throughout the pandemic.

Neurohype And The Law: A Cautionary Tale, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter suggests that for conceptual, empirical, and practical reasons, neuroscience in general and non-invasive brain imaging in particular are not likely to revolutionize the law and our conception of ourselves, but may make modest contributions to legal policy and case adjudication if the legal relevance of the science is properly understood.

Using The Engagedmd Multimedia Platform To Improve Informed Consent For Ovulation Induction, Intrauterine Insemination, And In Vitro Fertilization, Jody L. Madeira, Jennifer Rehbein, Mindy S. Christianson, Miryoung Lee, J. Preston Parry, Guido Pennings, Steven R. Lindheim Md

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Objective: To study patient and provider feedback on how a multimedia platform (EngagedMD) helps patients to understand the risks and consequences of in vitro fertilization (IVF), ovulation induction (OI), and intrauterine insemination (IUI) treatments and the impact of the informed consent process.

Design: Prospective survey study.

Setting: IVF units in the United States.

Patient(s): Six-thousand three-hundred and thirty-three patients who viewed the multimedia platform before IVF or OI-IUI treatment at 13 U.S. IVF centers and 128 providers.

Intervention(s): Quantitative survey with 17 questions.

Main Outcome Measure(s): Assessment of the impact of a multimedia platform on patient anxiety, comprehension, and satisfaction …

Banning Abortion In Cases Of Down Syndrome: Important Lessons For Advances In Genetic Diagnosis, Rebecca Reingold, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In December 2017, Ohio passed into law legislation that prohibited physicians from performing abortions if the pregnant woman’s decision was influenced by her belief that the fetus has Down syndrome. Physicians who perform abortions in these cases would face fourth-degree felony charges and revocation of their medical license. No other state bans abortion specifically for Down syndrome, but several ban abortions in cases of genetic diseases. Lower courts have struck down most such laws, holding they violate the constitutional rights of women. In February 2018, a federal district court judge blocked enforcement of Ohio’s law pending a final determination.

This …

Approaches To Carrier Testing And Results Disclosure In Translational Genomics Research, Ellen Wright Clayton, Kathryn M. Porter, Et Al.

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Background: Clinical genome and exome sequencing (CGES) is primarily used to address specific clinical concerns by detecting risk of future disease, clarifying diagnosis, or directing treatment. Additionally, CGES makes possible the disclosure of autosomal recessive and X-linked carrier results as additional secondary findings, and research about the impact of carrier results disclosure in this context is needed.

Methods: Representatives from 11 projects in the clinical sequencing exploratory research (CSER) consortium collected data from their projects using a structured survey. The survey focused on project characteristics, which variants were offered and/or disclosed to participants as carrier results, methods for carrier results …

Implementing A Public Health Perspective In Fda Drug Regulation, Patricia J. Zettler, Margaret Foster Riley, Aaron S. Kesselheim

Faculty Publications By Year

There is, without question, a public health crisis in the United States arising from both illicit and prescription opioid misuse, addiction, and overdose. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is one regulator with an important role to play in minimizing the harms associated with prescription opioids, while also ensuring that prescription opioids are available for the evidence-based management of pain. One question, however, is to what extent the agency can consider in its decisions to approve opioids and keep existing ones on the market the provider and patient behaviors contributing to the epidemic. This is, in part, because FDA’s approval …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Of 11 Addiction Experts In Support Of Appellee, Gene M. Heyman, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Stephen J. Morse, Sally L. Satel

All Faculty Scholarship

This brief is a critique of the brain disease model and many supposed implications of that model. It begins with a brief history of the model and moves to a discussion of the motivations behind the characterization of addiction as a “chronic and relapsing brain disease.” We follow with an enumeration of fallacious inferences based upon the brain disease model, including the very notion that addiction becomes a “brain disease” simply because it has neurobiological correlates. Regardless of whether addiction is labeled a brain disease, the real question, we contend, is whether the behavioral manifestations of addiction are unresponsive to …

Aligning Opioid Prescribing Pathways, Andrea Lai, Outpatient Pharmacy, Haley Pelletier, Suneela Nayak, Stephen Tyzik, Ruth Hanselman

Maine Medical Center

There is a drug epidemic sweeping the State of Maine and it continues to worsen each passing year. In 2017, the Maine legislature passed Public Law Chapter 488 to strengthen the controlled substance prescription monitoring program. An outpatient pharmacy, located in a large acute care hospital, created a performance improvement project to clarify opioid prescription and resolve any non-compliance with Chapter 488.

After a root cause analysis, several KPIs were established to include tracking the number of phone calls made by pharmacists to non-compliant providers to clarify scripts, provide one on one education and ultimately resolve non-compliance. Repeat offenders were …

Neuroscience In Forensic Contexts: Ethical Concerns, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a chapter in a volume, Ethics Challenges in Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology Practice, edited by Ezra E. H. Griffith, M.D. and to be published by Columbia University Press. The chapter addresses whether the use of new neuroscience techniques, especially non-invasive functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the data from studies employing them raise new ethical issues for forensic psychiatrists and psychologists. The implicit thesis throughout is that if the legal questions, the limits of the new techniques and the relevance of neuroscience to law are properly understood, no new ethical issues are raised. A major ethical lapse …

Why Baby Markets Aren’T Free, Dorothy E. Roberts

All Faculty Scholarship

Creating families in the twenty-first century increasingly happens in markets where the buying and selling of reproductive goods and services are facilitated by advanced technologies, the internet, contracts, and state laws and policies. Thus, the title of this international congress—“Baby Markets”—aptly captures a key aspect of modern reproduction. The ability of potential parents to engage in market transactions involving children enhances parents’ autonomy over their family lives. The free market seems to liberate us from the constraints of biology and state control.

This Essay argues, however, that baby markets aren’t free. Three aspects of the way reproductive goods and services …

When Empathy Bites Back: Cautionary Tales From Neuroscience For Capital Sentencing, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Amelia Courtney Hritz, Caisa Elizabeth Royer, John H. Blume

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The neuroscience of empathy provides one more reason to believe that the decision to sentence another human being to death is inevitably an arbitrary one, and one that cannot be divorced from either race or caprice. While we can tinker with aspects of capital trials that exacerbate caprice and discrimination stemming from empathy, we cannot alter basic neural responses to the pain of others and therefore cannot rationalize (in either sense of the word) empathic responses.

Actions Speak Louder Than Images: The Use Of Neuroscientific Evidence In Criminal Cases, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This invited commentary for Journal of Law & the Biosciences considers four empirical studies previously published in the journal of the reception of neuroscientific evidence in criminal cases in the United States, Canada, England and Wales, and the Netherlands. There are conceded methodological problems with all, but the data are nonetheless instructive and suggestive. The thesis of the comment is that the courts are committing the same errors that have bedeviled the reception of psychiatric and psychological evidence. There is insufficient caution about the state of the science, and more importantly, there is insufficient understanding of the relevance of the …

The Effects Of Allergies And Anaphylaxis On The Body And Mind: A Survey Of Opinions And Knowledge On These Disorders, Kathryn E. O'Brien

Honors Program: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Despite common knowledge, allergies and anaphylaxis are considered disabilities. As such, these disorders affect the daily lives of those who have them, including one's mental health. In this paper, all the nuances of allergies and anaphylaxis will be discussed as the etiology and scientific aspects of allergies, anaphylaxis, and hypersensitivity are distinguished from one another. Furthermore, the findings are reported from two surveys; an assessment of how well educated and prepared teachers are for students with allergies and whether other students with food allergies have had similar experiences to the author's and those described in research by other studies concerning …

The Use Of Neuroscience Evidence In Criminal Proceedings, John B. Meixner Jr.

Scholarly Works

While law and neuroscience has been an increasingly popular topic in academic discourse, until now, little systematic research had examined how neuroscience evidence has actually been used in court. Do courts actually admit and consider evidence of brain trauma that might indicate that an individual did not have the capacity to achieve the mental state required for conviction of particular crime? Do they use such evidence to consider the relative culpability for the crime in the event of conviction? Do they consider or understand brain scan data? For much of the life of this infant field, we have only been …

Decision Making And The Law: Truth Barriers, Jonathan J. Koehler, John B. Meixner Jr.

Scholarly Works

Reaching an accurate outcome is a central goal of the American trial. But structural features of the legal system, in combination with the cognitive shortcomings of legal actors, hinder the search for truth. Regarding the legal system, various rules and policies restrict decision makers’ access to evidence, violate the laws of probability, and limit the evidentiary concerns that may be considered on appeal. Regarding legal actors, informational deficits (particularly regarding scientific and statistical evidence) and cognitive biases of police investigators, witnesses (lay and expert), attorneys, judges, and jurors pose serious obstacles. We conclude by suggesting that research in judgment and …

What Does Recent Neuroscience Tell Us About Criminal Responsibility?, Uri Maoz, Gideon Yaffe

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

A defendant is criminally responsible for his action only if he is shown to have engaged in a guilty act—actus reus (eg for larceny, voluntarily taking someone else’s property without permission)—while possessing a guilty mind—mens rea (eg knowing that he had taken someone else’s property without permission, intending not to return it)—and lacking affirmative defenses (eg the insanity defense or self-defense). We therefore first review neuroscientific studies that bear on the nature of voluntary action, and so could, potentially, tell us something of importance about the actus reus of crimes.Then we look at studies of intention, perception of …

Criminal Law And Common Sense: An Essay On The Perils And Promise Of Neuroscience, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is based on the author’s Barrock Lecture in Criminal Law presented at the Marquette University Law School. The central thesis is that the folk psychology that underpins criminal responsibility is correct and that our commonsense understanding of agency and responsibility and the legitimacy of criminal justice generally are not imperiled by contemporary discoveries in the various sciences, including neuroscience and genetics. These sciences will not revolutionize criminal law, at least not anytime soon, and at most they may make modest contributions to legal doctrine, practice, and policy. Until there are conceptual or scientific breakthroughs, this is my story …

Regulating Drug Promotion To Promote The Public Health: A Response To Bennett, Et Al., Patricia J. Zettler

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Compassionate Use Of Experimental Therapies: Who Should Decide?, Patricia J. Zettler

Faculty Publications By Year

In addition to being an example of unsubstantiated hype about regenerative medicine, the controversy around the Italy-based Stamina Foundation's unproven stem cell therapy represents another chapter in a continuing debate about how to balance patients' requests for early access to experimental medicines with requirements for demonstrating safety and effectiveness. Compassionate use of the Stamina therapy arguably should not have been permitted under Italy's laws, but public pressure was intense and judges ultimately granted access. One lesson from these events is that expert regulatory agencies may be the institutions most competent to make compassionate use decisions and that policies should include …