Law Commons^™

Why Exempting Negligent Doctors May Reduce Suicide: An Empirical Analysis, John Shahar Dillbary, Griffin Edwards, Fredrick E. Vars

Indiana Law Journal

This Article is the first to empirically analyze the impact of tort liability on suicide. Counter-intuitively, our analysis shows that suicide rates increase when potential tort liability is expanded to include psychiatrists—the very defendants who would seem best able to prevent suicide. Using a fifty-state panel regression for 1981 to 2013, we find that states which allowed psychiatrists (but not other doctors) to be liable for malpractice resulting in suicide experienced a 9.3% increase in suicides. On the other hand, and more intuitively, holding non-psychiatrist doctors liable de-creases suicide by 10.7%. These countervailing effects can be explained by psychiatrists facing …

Law Library Blog (March 2018): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Failure Of The Federal Courts To Incorporate O'Connor's Dangerousness Requirement Into The Standards Utilized In Actions Challenging Wrongful Civil Comments, Svetlana Walker

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Capital Punishment, Psychiatrists And The Potential Bottleneck Of Competence , Jacob M. Appel

Journal of Law and Health

The purpose of this paper is to merge two largely separate bodies of writing on the subject of psychiatric participation in capital punishment. Much has already been written from the perspective of legal academics regarding the rights of prisoners to be free from unwanted medical care if the purpose of providing such care is to render them fit for execution. Medical ethicists have also written much on the degree to which physicians, and specifically psychiatrists, may participate in facilitating the death penalty before they become so complicit as to violate accepted standards of professional ethics. Surprisingly, these two fields of …

The Tail Still Wags The Dog: The Pervasive And Inappropriate Influence By The Psychiatric Profession On The Civil Commitment Process, William Brooks

Scholarly Works

The imposition of substantive and procedural protections in the civil commitment process thirty years ago created the expectation that courts would scrutinize commitment decisions by psychiatrists more closely and serve as a check on psychiatric decision-making. This has not happened.

Today, psychiatrists continue to play an overly influential role in the civil commitment process. Psychiatrists make initial commitment decisions that often lack accuracy because they rely on clinical judgment only. Furthermore, many psychiatrists do not want legal standards interfering with treatment decisions, and the nebulous nature of the concept of dangerousness enables doctors to make pretextual assessments of danger. At …

Irresistible Or Irresisted Impulse, Wladimir G. Eliasberg

Cleveland State Law Review

It is the purpose of this paper to show that the requirements made on psychiatry have not changed in the least since the application of the Durham Rule. It will be shown that now and in the future as before, the demonstration of the development and the dynamics of the mental processes is what the psychiatrist has to offer. Questions of guilt are not in his province. Now as before this latter remains the prerogative and obligation of the finders of fact, not of the experts.