Law Commons^™

Unreasonable: Involuntary Medications, Incompetent Criminal Defendants, And The Fourth Amendment, Dora W. Klein

Faculty Articles

Involuntary medical treatment potentially compromises several individual constitutional interests. However, like all individual constitutional rights, rights under both the Due Process Clause and the Fourth Amendment can be outweighed by sufficiently important governmental interests.

To determine whether involuntary medical treatment violates the Due Process Clause, courts ask whether the government’s interest that the treatment advances is important enough to justify compromising the individual’s interest in making an autonomous decision to refuse medical treatment. Involuntary treatment must also be medically appropriate, but any physical harms that the treatment might cause are not balanced directly against the government’s interest.

When the government …

New Legal Rights In The Legal System Of The United States Of America, Roberto Rosas, Bill Piatt

Faculty Articles

What new rights does the American legal system offer at the start of the 21st century? This article takes a snapshot of some of the most controversial topics in American society today and the juridical response to these topics by individual states, the United States Congress, and the United States Supreme Court. Although there are numerous legal topics that deserve mention and analysis, this article is limited to the discussion of 7 new rights created by state and federal laws. The new legal rights in the United States legal system discussed in this article include the following: 1) The right …