Law Commons^™

Bioethics: Ethical Considerations Of Ventilator Triage During A Pandemic, Susannah J. Gleason, William J. Keegan

Georgia State University Law Review

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals across the country faced unprecedented volumes of patients seeking treatment related to the respiratory complications of the virus. As a result, states were forced to reassess existing scarce resource allocation guidelines to appropriately accommodate the high demand. This Peach Sheet analyzes the ethical considerations implicated in enacting and following these guidelines when treating patients, specifically in the context of ventilator triage in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Equitable Allocation Of Covid-19 Vaccines: An Analysis Of The Initial Allocation Plans Of Cdc's Jurisdictions With Implications For Disparate Impact Monitoring, Harald Schmidt, Rebecca Weintraub, Michelle A. Williams, Alison Buttenheim, Emily Sadecki, Helen Wu, Lawrence O. Gostin, Angela A. Shen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Major global and national vaccine allocation guidelines urge planners to allocate vaccines in ways that recognize, and ideally reduce, existing societal inequities within countries. However, allocation plans of the US will be determined individually by each of the CDC’s 64 jurisdictions (states, the District of Columbia, five cities, and territories). We analyzed whether jurisdictions have incorporated novel approaches to reduce inequity, based on plans published by the CDC in early November 2020 (63 summaries [98% of all jurisdictions] and 47 full guidance documents [73% of all, including all 50 states]).

Eighteen states adopted a novel proposal to use a disadvantage …

Avoiding Judicial Discipline, Veronica Root Martinez

Northwestern University Law Review

Over the past several years, several high-profile complaints have been levied against Article III judges alleging improper conduct. Many of these complaints, however, were dismissed without investigation after the judge in question removed themselves from the jurisdiction of the circuit’s judicial council—oftentimes through retirement and once through elevation to the Supreme Court. When judges—the literal arbiters of justice within American society—are able to elude oversight of their own potential misconduct, it puts the legitimacy of the judiciary and the rule of law in jeopardy.

This Essay argues that it is imperative that mechanisms are adopted that will ensure investigations into …

The Due Process Protections Act: Is The Juice Worth The Squeeze?, Allyson Benko

SLU Law Journal Online

President Trump signed the Due Process Protections Act into law on October 21, 2020. Allyson Benko discusses how Federal judges must now remind prosecutors on the record of their obligation under Brady v. Maryland to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense in every criminal case.

Video; Health Law & Ethics 2020, Kathy Cerminara, Jonathan Kroner Law Office, Mcdermott Will & Emery Llp, Lubell & Rosen, Gerald M. Morris

NSU Law Seminar Series

This program will focus on the current climate of health law and the necessary steps used through federal practice to adjust to the ever-changing atmosphere of new legislation. Attendees will learn about the various paths within the practice, about emerging new laws, outreach and training, and how to become involved in the federal practice of health law. The presenters will explain what you need to get started, what different types of experiences and exposure might be helpful in entering the field and instruct you on maintaining ethics by knowing and following the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Model Rules …

Is It Lawful And Ethical To Prioritize Racial Minorities For Covid-19 Vaccines?, Harald Schmidt, Lawrence O. Gostin, Michelle A. Williams

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disproportionately affected racial minorities in the United States resulting in higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death. With a limited supply after the initial approval of a safe and effective vaccine, difficult legal and ethical choices will have to be made on priority access for individuals. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has recommended prioritization of racial minorities who are “worse off” socioeconomically and epidemiologically. TheWorld Health Organization (WHO) similarly cautioned that “colorblind” allocation frameworks could perpetuate or exacerbate existing injustices. Both NASEM and WHO urge policy makers to allocate vaccines in …

The Urgency Of Ethics In Political Leadership, President Vicente Fox

The International Journal of Ethical Leadership

No abstract provided.

Gut Renovations: Using Critical And Comparative Rhetoric To Remodel How The Law Addresses Privilege And Power, Lucille Jewel

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Is Demilitarizing Military Justice An Ethical Imperative For Congress, The Courts, And The Commander-In-Chief?, Dan Maurer

Hofstra Law Review

This symposium introduction to ethics in military justice highlights that professional responsibility norms, expectations, and problems impact and imperial this discipline just as they do in any other criminal justice system. But in such a dizzyingly specialized criminal justice schema, the problems and perils of legal ethics and professional responsibility are both heightened and clouded by their seemingly difficult remoteness. Because the context of military justice implicates -- to various degrees -- national security, and not just individual cases and individual parties, special attention is owed in several critical areas. Political interference in military prosecutions has a long history, and …

As The Role Of The Driver Changes With Autonomous Vehicle Technology, So, Too, Must The Law Change, Nanci K. Carr

St. Mary's Law Journal

Getting a driver’s license is a highly anticipated rite of passage for most teenagers. Being alone behind the wheel, in control of a 3,000-pound machine, is an honor, a privilege, and a sign of adult responsibility. How will that change when driver’s licenses become licenses “to cause technology to engage” with the increased use of autonomous cars? Will driver’s education courses, with their focus on safety rules and defensive driving techniques, be eliminated if all a vehicle operator needs to do is push a button and the vehicle does the rest? While arguably autonomous cars are safer, they will not …

Tech Policy And Legal Theory Syllabus, Yafit Lev-Aretz, Nizan Packin

Open Educational Resources

Technology has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. Currently, virtually all business industries are powered by large quantities of data. The potential as well as actual uses of business data, which oftentimes includes personal user data, raise complex issues of informed consent and data protection. This course will explore many of these complex issues, with the goal of guiding students into thinking about tech policy from a broad ethical perspective as well as preparing students to responsibly conduct themselves in different areas and industries in a world growingly dominated by technology.

Authority And The Globalisation Of Inclusion And Exclusion: Author Meets Readers, Hand Lindahl, Christine Bell Prof, Friedrich Kratochwil, Hans-W. Micklitz, Carlos Thiebaut, Bert Van Roermund

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Authority is written against the background of intense resistance to globalization processes by a range of political movements and grassroots organizations. These processes are complex and have a variety of dimensions. One of these is the emergence of global legal orders, which I define, in a rough and ready manner, as relatively autonomous legal orders that claim or aspire to claim global validity for themselves. They too-most obviously the World Trade Organization (WTO)-are the butt of resistance. Whatever its forms and aspirations, resistance to globalization is fueled by their peculiar dynamic. Indeed, emergent global legal orders spawn massive exclusion when …

From The Tree Of Knowledge And The Golem Of Prague To Kosher Autonomous Cars: The Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence Through Jewish Eyes, Nachshon Goltz, John Zeleznikow, Tracey Dowdeswell

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This article discusses the regulation of artificial intelligence from a Jewish perspective, with an emphasis on the regulation of machine learning and its application to autonomous vehicles and machine learning. Through the Biblical story of Adam and Eve as well as Golem legends from Jewish folklore, we derive several basic principles that underlie a Jewish perspective on the moral and legal personhood of robots and other artificially intelligent agents. We argue that religious ethics in general, and Jewish ethics in particular, show us that the dangers of granting moral personhood to robots and in particular to autonomous vehicles lie not …

Ethical Issues With Lawyers Openly Carrying Firearms, Dru Stevenson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Ethical concerns arise when lawyers openly carry firearms to adversarial meetings related to representation, such as depositions and settlement negotiations. Visible firearms introduce an element of intimidation, or at least the potential for misunderstandings and escalation of conflicts. The adverse effects of openly carried firearms can impact opposing parties, opposing counsel, the lawyer’s potential clients, witnesses, and even judges and jurors encountered outside the courtroom. The ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct in their current form include provisions that could be applicable, such as rules against coercion and intimidation, but there is no explicit reference to firearms. Several reported incidents …

Genome Editing 2020: Ethics And Human Rights In Germline Editing In Humans And Gene Drives In Mosquitoes, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The moon landing, now more than a half century in the past, has turned out to be the culmination of human space travel, rather than its beginning. Genetic engineering, especially applications of CRISPR, now presents the most publicly discussed engineering challenges—and not just technical, but ethical as well. In this article, I will use the two most controversial genomic engineering applications to help identify the ethics and human rights implications of these research projects. Each of these techniques directly modifies the mechanisms of evolution, threatens to alter our views of ourselves as humans and our planet as our home, and …

A Typology Of Justice Department Lawyers' Roles And Responsibilities, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

President Trump’s administration has persistently challenged the legitimacy of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”). In the past, DOJ, like other governmental institutions, has been fairly resilient. Informal norms and practices have served to preserve its proper functioning, even under pressure. The strain of the past three years, however, has been different in kind and scale. This Article offers a typology of different roles for DOJ lawyers and argues that over time the institution has evolved by allocating different functions and responsibilities to different positions within DOJ. By doing so, it has for the most part maintained the proper balance between …

Setting Priorities Fairly In Response To Covid-19: Identifying Overlapping Consensus And Reasonable Disagreement, David Wasserman, Govind C. Persad, Joseph Millum

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Proposals for allocating scarce lifesaving resources in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic have aligned in some ways and conflicted in others. This paper attempts a kind of priority setting in addressing these conflicts. In the first part, we identify points on which we do not believe that reasonable people should differ—even if they do. These are (i) the inadequacy of traditional clinical ethics to address priority-setting in a pandemic; (ii) the relevance of saving lives; (iii) the flaws of first-come, first-served allocation; (iv) the relevance of post-episode survival; (v) the difference between age and other factors that affect life-expectancy; …

Ethical Implications Of Forensic Genealogy In Criminal Cases, Solana Lund

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

The use of forensic genealogy to solve criminal cases is likely to increase in the coming years, especially given its success in solving cold cases. While its potential for good is impressive, there are also legitimate ethical concerns that need to be addressed. As society sees an increase in the use of forensic genealogy and DTC databases in criminal investigations as well as an increase in the media attention it garners, there will be more discussion regarding ethical implications. Legal scholars say that it is only a matter of time before courts weigh in on the privacy of DNA and …

The Normative Molecule: Patent Rights And Dna, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

Throughout the biotechnology age, fears about the distortionary effects of property and other legal institutions upon the health and self-determination of individuals and societies have accompanied more popularly sensational fears about unscrupulous choices within the scientific community itself. Still, for most of that time the prevailing legal regime both in the United States and in Europe remained generally permissive of ownership of, and exclusionary power over, the fruits of much biomedical research, though this leniency took different forms and came about in different ways. In particular, the policy of the United States Patent and Trademark Office to grant patents on …

Loans And Marketing Guarantees In Athlete Agent Recruiting: Why They Are Ill-Advised Under Agency Law And Attorney Ethics Regulations Principles, Joshua Lens

Texas A&M Law Review

Athlete agents use various means to recruit prospective clients. Controversial yet common methods include offering loans and marketing guarantees to prospective clients. In each transaction, the agent provides his client with money, in some cases amounting to millions of dollars. The agent typically expects repayment of the loan whereas the marketing guarantee is an advance on future marketing income that the agent will arrange for the athlete. While both National Football League Players Association (“NFLPA”) agent regulations and state athlete agent laws prohibit agents from offering inducements to prospective clients, neither authority considers loans or marketing guarantees illicit or prohibits …

Regulating Personal Data Usage In Covid-19 Control Conditions, Mark Findlay, Nydia Remolina

Centre for AI & Data Governance

As the COVID-19 health pandemic ebbs and flows world-wide, governments and private companies across the globe are utilising AI-assisted surveillance, reporting, mapping and tracing technologies with the intention of slowing the spread of the virus. These technologies have capacity to amass and share personal data for community control and citizen safety motivations that empower state agencies and inveigle citizen co-operation which could only be imagined outside times of real and present personal danger. While not cavilling with the short-term necessity for these technologies and the data they control, process and share in the health regulation mission (provided that the technology …

Restraints In Massachusetts Public Schools, Elyce Hall

Master’s Theses and Projects

The purpose of this research study was to investigate the moral and legal issues around physically restraining students in Massachusetts public schools. As Massachusetts law is written, the use of restraints on a student should be the last possible resort. However, this thesis used data on restraint use from the Massachusetts Department of Education and a survey of school administrators to gain a better understanding of the 38,994 student restraints that were used in 2016-2017 school year. Findings of this study include that Hispanic and African-American students were more likely to attend schools that used restraints than those that did …

Ordinary People And The Rationalization Of Wrongdoing, Janice Nadler

Michigan Law Review

Review of Yuval Feldman's The Law of Good People: Challenging States' Ability to Regulate Human Behavior.

Ethics, Ai, Mass Data And Pandemic Challenges: Responsible Data Use And Infrastructure Application For Surveillance And Pre-Emptive Tracing Post-Crisis, Mark Findlay, Jia Yuan Loke, Nydia Remolina Leon, Yum Yin, Benjamin (Tan Renyan) Tham

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As the COVID-19 health pandemic rages governments and private companies across the globe are utilising AI-assisted surveillance, reporting, mapping and tracing technologies with the intention of slowing the spread of the virus. These technologies have the capacity to amass personal data and share for community control and citizen safety motivations that empower state agencies and inveigle citizen co-operation which could only be imagined outside such times of real and present danger. While not cavilling with the short-term necessity for these technologies and the data they control, process and share in the health regulation mission, this paper argues that this infrastructure …

Structuring The Debate About Research Ethics In The Psychology And Law Field: An International Perspective, Alfred Allan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Forensic psychologists’ role is well established, and they are rightly well regulated because their decisions and behaviour can have a significant impact on people’s rights and interests. Their ethical integrity, however, partly hinges on the psycholegal research products (data, methods and instruments) that they and others use. The ethical regulation of researchers who produce products and their research processes is, however, fragmented, limited and narrow and largely focuses on domestic research. Relatively few scholars have examined the regulation of psycholegal research or commented on the ethical implications of recent court decisions. The purpose of this paper is to start a …

Regulating Care Robots, Valarie K. Blake

Law Faculty Scholarship

Care robots already assist the elderly in some nursing homes around the globe and could be in widespread use in hospitals and private homes sooner than we think. These robots promise great hope for patients: robots can provide increased independence, assistance with daily living, comfort and distraction during procedures, education, and companionship during vulnerable and lonely times in patients' lives. Despite these promising features, there are a number of concerns; care robots, designed with the aim of winning patient trust and affection, have unprecedented access to personal lives as well as recording and sensory capabilities beyond any human. They pose …

"Agape" And The Life And Work Of Robert F. Cochran, Jr., Angela C. Carmella

Pepperdine Law Review

The life and work of Robert Cochran can be summed up in one word: discipleship. Professor Cochran’s work reflects deeply on Jesus’s words and ministry—His agapic love for all humanity—as they relate to the substance of law and its administration. Professor Cochran’s work establishes two important principles: the need to focus on Jesus’s love as the starting place for analysis and the need to reclaim justice as a central Christian concept. His many volumes help us to understand how it is possible to comprehend lawmaking as an act of agapic love. Further, they provide a roadmap for the Christian’s journey, …

Artificial Intelligence And The Problem Of Autonomy, Simon Chesterman

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are routinely said to operate autonomously, exposing gaps in regulatory regimes that assume the centrality of human actors. Yet surprisingly little attention is given to precisely what is meant by “autonomy” and its relationship to those gaps. Driverless vehicles and autonomous weapon systems are the most widely studied examples, but related issues arise in algorithms that allocate resources or determine eligibility for programs in the private or public sector. This article develops a novel typology of autonomy that distinguishes three discrete regulatory challenges posed by AI systems: the practical difficulties of managing risk associated with new …

Ethics Advising A Wells Fargo Whistleblower: A Story Of Early Wrongdoing, Thomas Creely

The International Journal of Ethical Leadership

No abstract provided.

"Tone At The Top" And The Communication Of Corporate Values: Lost In Translation?, Alfredo Contreras, Aiyesha Dey, Claire Hill

Seattle University Law Review

Many firms that were involved in large-scale corporate frauds had strong corporate codes of ethics and values statements. These firms were also subject to considerable social pressures to be mindful of their reputations; frauds are “negative reputational events.” Notably, the frauds not infrequently involved possible, or even outright, illegality. Why didn’t these strong forces—strong codes of ethics and firms’ clear interest in maintaining a good reputation, as well as the fear of legal liability—do more to prevent the frauds? It seems hard to imagine that serious misdeeds could occur if the top management was committed to preventing them. But top …