Law Commons^™

Addressing Access To Medicine: The Influence Of Competing Patent Perspectives, Cynthia M. Ho

Cynthia M Ho

Promoting access to affordable medicine for poor countries is considered important by a wide range of actors, including not only rich and poor countries, but also public health advocates, patent owners, and scholars. However, promoting access has been elusive. Public health advocates argue that access to medicine is increasingly difficult due to changes in domestic and international laws that limit access to unpatented and low-cost generic drugs by expanding the scope of patent rights. Patent owners and some countries deny these claims while simultaneously advocating for more expansive patent rights as necessary to promote innovation and development. This article addresses …

The Growing Consumer Exposure To Nanotechnology In Everyday Products: Regulating Innovative Technologies In Light Of Lessons From The Past, K Van Tassel, R Goldman

Katharine A. Van Tassel

Consumers in the United States are being exposed to steadily increasing levels of novel and untested engineered nanoparticles as a result of their contact with everyday consumer products. Nanoparticles are very small particles that are engineered using innovative technologies to be 1 to 100 nanometers in size. Just how small is small? In comparison, a human hair is 80,000 nanometers wide. Nanoscale materials are increasingly being used in a wide variety of areas, including electronic, magnetic, medical imaging, drug delivery, catalytic, materials applications, and cosmetic products. According to the National Institute of Occupational Health, new nanotechnology consumer products are coming …

The Growing Consumer Exposure To Nanotechnology In Everyday Products: Regulating Innovative Technologies In Light Of Lessons From The Past, K Van Tassel, R Goldman

Katharine A. Van Tassel

Consumers in the United States are being exposed to steadily increasing levels of novel and untested substances as a result of their contact with consumer products containing nanoparticles. Hundreds of consumer products are being marketed for human consumption, including food, dietary supplements, cosmetics and sunscreens. This expanding market ignores the growing scientific understanding that nanoparticles can create unintended human health and environmental risks. This Article discusses the public health, regulatory, legal and ethical issues raised by the developing appreciation of the health risks associated with nanotech products and is arranged as follows. After this Introduction, this Article describes the present …

The Hollow Promise Of Freedom Of Conscience, Nadia N. Sawicki

Nadia N. Sawicki

Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson asserted that no law “ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority." Since then, freedom of conscience has continued to be heralded as a fundamental principle of American society. Indeed, many current policy debates – most notably in the medical and military contexts – are predicated on the theory that claims of conscience are worthy of legal respect. This Article challenges established assumptions, concluding that claims about the importance of conscience in American society have been highly exaggerated.

This Article first …

The Abortion Informed Consent Debate: More Light, Less Heat, Nadia N. Sawicki

Nadia N. Sawicki

State abortion informed consent laws – including those requiring physicians to disclose that abortion terminates the life of a “whole, separate, unique, living human being” or display ultrasound images to patients seeking abortions – are being adopted at a rapid pace. Health law scholars who oppose these laws uniformly criticize them as being fundamentally inconsistent with the doctrine of informed consent. This Article directly challenges this conventional approach. It argues that the doctrine of informed consent does not impose nearly as significant a barrier to abortion disclosure laws as many critics claim. Rather, the ethical and legal principles of informed …

Is The Attorney-Client Privilege A Privilege Of The Rich? Federal Hmis Database Reporting And Homeless Client Confidentiality, Jennifer Hammitt

Jennifer Hammitt

No abstract provided.

Due Process In Civil Commitments, Alexander Tsesis

Alexander Tsesis

In one of its most controversial decisions to date, United States v. Comstock, the Roberts Court upheld a federal civil commitment statute requiring only an intermediate burden of proof. The statute provided for the postsentencing confinement of anyone proven by “clear and convincing evidence” to be mentally ill and dangerous. The law relied on a judicial standard established more than thirty years before. The majority in Comstock missed the opportunity to reassess the precedent in light of recent psychiatric studies indicating that the ambiguity of available diagnostic tools can lead to erroneous insanity assessments and mistaken evaluations about patients’ likelihood …