Law Commons^™

Reimagining Icarus: Ethics, Law And Policy Considerations For Commercial Human Spaceflight, Sara M. Langston

Publications

Commercial human spaceflight presents an area for engaging novel human activity and objectives, to include space exploration, entertainment, transportation and extraterrestrial resource acquisition. The inherent dangers and lack of scientific and medical certainty involved however raise interrelated questions of ethics, bioethics, law and public policy. This is particularly the case with spaceflight participant (SFP) screening, selection, and commercial human spaceflight activities where regulations are currently silent or lacking. In the absence of established law, ethics can play an important role by informing industry standards, policies and best practices. Understanding the fundamental ethical values at stake in the application of new …

Race And Assisted Reproduction: Implications For Population Health, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

This Article emerges from Fordham Law Review's Symposium on the fiftieth anniversary of Loving v. Virginia,¹ the case that found antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional. ² Inspired by the need to interrogate the regulation of race in the context of family, this Article examines the diffuse regulatory environment around assisted reproductive technology (ART) that shapes procreative decisions and the inequalities that these decisions may engender. ³ ART both centers biology and raises questions about how we imagine our racial futures in the context of family, community, and nation. ⁴ Importantly, ART demonstrates how both the state and private actors shape family …

Fighting For Your Life In America: A Study Of "Right To Try" Laws Throughout The Country, Danielle Delgrosso

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Note argues that there should be a federal statute granting terminally ill patients access to experimental drugs, but that the Trickett Wendler Act, as written is not the proper vehicle for change. An ideal congressional “Right to Try” statute should be crafted to make experimental drugs realistically obtainable for terminally ill patients while protecting those patients and their quality of life. The Trickett Wendler Act’s weaknesses prevent it from reaching this objective because it is too deferential to already unclear state Right to Try laws. Part I explores the right to try movement generally, explaining what a “right …

How Subterranean Regulation Hinders Innovation In Assisted Reproductive Technology, Myrisha S. Lewis

Faculty Publications

Most scholars believe assisted reproductive technology is subject only to minimal regulation, especially by the federal government. This belief, I contend, is wrong. In this Article, I examine agency documents, statements by officials, and letters that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has sent to physicians and researchers over the past fifteen years to reveal an overlooked regulatory program. The FDA has been targeting new forms of assisted reproductive technology that involve small genetic modifications (advanced assisted reproductive technologies or AARTs) through regulatory actions that receive little public, media, or scholarly attention. I term this method of regulation “subterranean …

When Extinction Is More Ethical Than Conservation: The Endangered Species Act And The Keystone Dilemma, Miranda F. Thomas

Exigence

This paper examines how the Endangered Species Act's measures to protect endangered species have resulted in increased rates of extinction. The author summarizes the concept of endangered keystone species and explains the processes and operations of the environmental legislation enacted to protect the species. The paper discusses the harmful consequences that certain laws have had on both species and humans, such as misappropriating resources to species that are not as endangered as others, and abusing regulations in manners that punish people for conservation efforts. By examining opposing arguments that favor increased regulation, this paper explains through data from leading academic …

Baby M Turns 30: The Law And Policy Of Surrogate Motherhood, Eric A. Feldman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article marks the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court of New Jersey’s Baby M decision by offering a critical analysis of surrogacy policy in the United States. Despite fundamental changes in both science and society since the case was decided, state courts and legislatures remain bitterly divided on the legality of surrogacy. In arguing for a more uniform, permissive legal posture toward surrogacy, the article addresses five central debates in the surrogacy literature.

First, should the legal system accommodate those seeking conception through surrogacy, or should it prohibit such arrangements? Second, if surrogacy is permitted, what steps can be …

Teaching Bioethics: The Role Of Empathy & Humility In The Teaching And Practice Of Law, Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

This essay considers the role of empathy and humility in the professional practices of physicians and lawyers and in those who prepare students for these professions. Beginning with an overview of the goals and methods of legal education, it compares similar goals in medical education and the value of practicing law (and medicine) with empathy and humility. The essay then describes exercises used in the law school classroom designed both to teach law students about end-of-life law and also to allow them to practice counseling clients. Through these exercises, law students can experience firsthand the challenges of advising a client …

Teaching Bioethics: The Role Of Empathy & Humility In The Teaching And Practice Of Law, Barbara A. Noah

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

The article discusses how bioethics education integrates ideas from ethics, law, science, and public policy with the goal of solving problems associated with the delivery of medical care. Topics discussed include Torts and various health law courses; American legal education's multi-tiered approach to teach students about law; and role of empathy and humility in the teaching and practice of law.

The Technologies Of Race: Big Data, Privacy And The New Racial Bioethics, Christian Sundquist

Articles

Advancements in genetic technology have resurrected long discarded conceptualizations of “race” as a biological reality. The rise of modern biological race thinking – as evidenced in health disparity research, personal genomics, DNA criminal forensics, and bio-databanking - not only is scientifically unsound but portends the future normalization of racial inequality. This Article articulates a constitutional theory of shared humanity, rooted in the substantive due process doctrine and Ninth Amendment, to counter the socio-legal acceptance of modern genetic racial differentiation. It argues that state actions that rely on biological racial distinctions undermine the essential personhood of individuals subjected to such taxonomies, …