Law Commons^™

Assisting Minors Seeking Abortions In Judicial Bypass Proceedings: A Guardian Ad Litem Is No Substitute For An Attorney, Elizabeth S. Graybill

Vanderbilt Law Review

Since the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade,' minors have been particularly affected by the efforts of pro-life activists and state legislatures who have curtailed abortion rights by lobbying for and passing legislation that restricts reproductive freedom. Forty-three states have enacted laws requiring a minor either to obtain consent from or to notify one or both parents before undergoing an abortion, and thirty-three of these statutes are currently enforceable. The Supreme Court has recognized the right of parents to be involved in a child's upbringing and the prerogative of the state to limit a minor's freedom to make major life …

Safety At Any Price, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

After three decades of experience with extensive government regulation and oversight of health, safety and environmental matters, we have reason to believe that those measures have largely failed to fulfill their initial promise, but many of the initial promises were infeasible goals of a "zero-risk" society. Economic findings with respect to risk-risk tradeoffs highlight the fallacies inherent in government's zero-risk mentality. Agencies that make an unbounded financial commitment to safety frequently are sacrificing individual lives. There continues to be major opportunities to improve regulatory performance by targeting existing inefficiencies and using market mechanisms (rather than strict command-and-control mechanisms) to achieve …

The Market Value Of Reducing Cancer Risk: Hedonic Housing Prices With Changing Information, W. Kip Viscusi, Ted Gayer, James T. Hamilton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this paper, we use housing price changes occurring after the release of a regulatory agency's environmental risk information to estimate the value people place on cancer risk reduction. Using a large original data set on the repeat sales of houses, matched with detailed data on hazardous waste cancer risk and newspaper publicity, we find that housing prices respond in a rational manner to changes in information about risk. Since the new information indicated that the sites in our sample pose relatively low cancer risk, the informational release led residents to lower their risk beliefs, resulting in an average housing …

Health Versus Trade: The Future Of The Who's Framework Convention On Tobacco Control, Alyssa Woo

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

On October 16, 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) began the first session of negotiations of its first international health treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Scheduled for adoption in May 2003, the FCTC is a comprehensive multilateral treaty that will cover everything from tobacco smuggling to tobacco advertising and the extent of the liability of tobacco companies.

This Note argues that even-handed domestic measures implementing the FCTC will be protected from international, trade-based complaints because the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement system has given sufficient and appropriate content to the health exception to the normal trade rules …