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Table Of Contents, Annals Of Health Law & Life Sciences

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Megan Baumgardner

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Imperfect Access: Structural Barriers And External Threats To Preventative Care, Richard Hughes Iv, Dorit R. Reiss

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Dignity In Detention: Addressing Gynecological Healthcare Needs Of People Detained By U.S. Immigration Authorities, Glykeria Teji, Esq., Shira Wisotsky, Esq.

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

People who require gynecological and obstetric care and who are detained by U.S. federal immigration authorities face unique challenges. This article examines how the current legal and administrative landscape fails to hold those responsible for providing healthcare accountable, effectively blocking access to gynecological care, and, assuming no immediate abolition of immigrant detention facilities, how international human law principles can and should guide a reimagining of the system. We also propose interim steps that U.S. authorities can take to protect access to basic and needed gynecological care for the people that they detain. Beginning with an overview of immigration detention as …

Defending Olmstead: Strategies For Combatting Institutional Bias To Improve Access To Mental Health Services In The Least Restrictive Setting, Craig Ismaili, Esq., Adrienne Langlois, Esq., Bren Pramanik, Esq.

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Transformative Experiences, Anticipatory Regret, And Informed Consent, Elizabeth Lanphier, Shannon Fyfe

Scholarly Articles

Regret risk is not consistently part of information sharing within informed consent. Yet two kinds of decisions that often invoke concerns about future regret, abortion and sterilization, raise considerations for the role of regret in clinical decision-making and informed consent, particularly regarding decisions about potentially transformative experiences. We distinguish between first-personal and second-personal anticipatory regret and argue that first-personal anticipatory regret can play a productive role, but second-personal anticipatory regret can function in ways that are pernicious. Introducing second-personal anticipatory regret into medical informed consent processes is, we argue, not only not required for informed medical decision-making, but impermissible within …

Medicare Mandates For Shared Decision Making With Patient Decision Aids: Linking Payment To Preference, Thaddeus Mason Pope, Jd, Phd

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

Since 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has increasingly required shared decision making with evidence-based patient decision aids as an essential Medicare condition for payment. CMS is doing this because it recognizes that most healthcare is preference sensitive and value laden. So, whether treatment is “right” or “beneficial” for a patient is not only a matter of clinical expertise. It equally depends on the patient’s values, preferences, and goals. So, CMS wants to ensure that patients understand the risks, benefits, and alternatives to the healthcare that they receive and for which CMS pays. In short, under its …

Reducing Discrimination In Organ Transplant Candidacy Evaluation Against Persons Who Use Drugs, Hannah Rahim, Bhsc

Annals of Health Law and Life Sciences

Many organ transplant centers deny persons who use drugs eligibility for receiving a transplant because of concerns about the impact of drugs on transplant success. These policies are often not based on sufficient medical evidence and are highly variable between transplant centers. Restricting persons who use drugs from organ transplantation can exacerbate existing racial and geographic inequities in access to organ transplantation. This paper explores discrimination against persons who use drugs in organ transplantation. I examine when considering a patient’s drug use in organ transplant eligibility assessment is illegal and when it is immoral and I offer recommendations for statutory, …

The Supreme Court During Covid-19: Keeping Its Head When Those About It Were Losing Theirs, Timothy C. Macdonnell

Scholarly Articles

Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No. 78 suggests that one of the reasons for a life-tenured judiciary whose pay cannot be altered is because "judges may be an essential safeguard against the effects of occasional ill humours in the society." Our Nation's history is replete with instances of ill humor leading to violations of constitutional rights. Wars, epidemics, natural disasters, civil unrest, and economic crises all demand governments to act and act swiftly. But courts, and particularly the United States Supreme Court, are necessary to check governments when they go too far in contending with an emergency.

Historically the country's courts have …

Patient Autonomy, Public Safety, And Drivers With Cognitive Decline, Sharona Hoffman, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

With a growing elderly population, cognitive decline in drivers has become a significant public safety concern. Currently, over thirty-two million individuals who are seventy or older have driver’s licenses, and that number is growing quickly. In addition, almost ten percent of U.S. seniors (those sixty-five and older) have dementia, and an additional twenty-two percent have mild cognitive impairment. Between a quarter and a half of individuals with mild to moderate dementia still drive. As cognitive abilities such as memory, attention, and decision-making skills deteriorate, a driver's ability to operate a vehicle safely can be compromised. This not only puts the …

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

Antitrust In The Health Care Sector, Doug Ross

Chapters in Books

This chapter is an opportunity for students to apply the concepts addressed elsewhere in the book, but at a deeper level and in the context of a sector that accounts for a very large share of antitrust activity on the part of government enforcers and private plaintiffs. The topics chosen illustrate some of the nuances in applying antitrust law in the real world and show how the application of antitrust principles has evolved over time. The chapter also raises important policy questions regarding how to apply antitrust to a sector that is rife with market failures, including what tools and …

Abundance And Other Food Fixations, Margot J. Pollans

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Although most people in the United States no longer devote the majority of their time to food production, processing, and distribution, food remains a daily fixation. This Article explores three driving food fixations--abundance, thinness, and health--and situates each against an inverse fear--scarcity, fatness, and illness, respectively. Mapping these threats onto U.S. food policy, this Article examines, among other policy arenas, food waste policy, nutrition and health claim labeling law, and food additive regulations. Across food policy, these fixations feed what this Article calls the “politics of abundance.” This politics helps to insulate the food industry from deeper systemic reform aimed …

Consequences Of Artificial Intelligence In Health Insurance: Lawsuits, Policy, And Ethics, Alyssa N. Roberts

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In recent years, the healthcare system has been burdened by a multitude of obstacles that hinder the ability to provide effective, affordable, and timely care. Among these, one of the most significant challenges is the role that health insurance plays in shaping the quality of care. Health insurance companies are designed to decrease financial strain on patients, but they have introduced inefficiencies through delayed coverage approvals, increased denials, and administrative costs. Artificial intelligence (AI) has started to play an integral role in resolving these issues for the health insurance industry. Through its quick automated claim processing, fraud screening, and reduced …

Navigating The Legal Risk Universities’ Healthcare Providers Potentially Face From Medical Decisions Impacting Collegiate Athletes’ Future Nil Income While Following The Ncaa’S Mental Health Best Practices, Kenneth D. Ferguson

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cronyism In Creating Chronic Disease—A Path To Food Justice, Martha Leonard

St. Thomas Law Review

Central to this discussion is a quote often attributed to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates: “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” Today, physicians recognize the crucial role of diet in maintaining good health and preventing chronic disease, but U.S. laws fail to reflect this understanding. The health field has seen significant progress in scientific research on pathology; however, nutritional research presents a challenging and contradictory landscape. Corporate influence in scientific research leads to a lack of consensus on the most optimal diet for promoting general health, presenting a challenge for policymaking. The dark reality is that …

Don’T Trust The Process: The Viability Of Eighth Amendment Claims For Ultra-Processed Food Overconsumption In Prisons, Markus C. Johnson, Rita L. Rahoi-Gilchrest

Marquette Law Review

With the largest prison population worldwide, American prisons serve more food than anywhere else. To cut costs, American prisons overwhelmingly (or even entirely) serve prisoners ultra-processed foods, which, if overconsumed, have detrimental and long-lasting health effects. Prisoners taking issue with the food being served to them rely on the courts to counteract any inappropriate prison dietary practices, wielding the Eighth Amendment as a constitutional guarantee to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. But courts are failing to protect this constitutional guarantee by relying on precedent that is at odds with modern Eighth Amendment principles. Indeed, when it comes to …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works.

Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s …

Protecting Older Adults Who Are Incarcerated: Does The 8th Amendment Work?, Jalayne J. Arias

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

Older adults in prison and within other carceral systems (i.e. jails, parole) are uniquely at risk for elder mistreatment. Emerging research has begun to consider the experiences of older adults within carceral settings, including aging in prison, chronic conditions and medical care, compassionate release, and end-of-life care. This research exposes evidence that prisons and other carceral settings lack resources and services for older adults. Given increased vulnerability and a lack of protective resources, older adults experiencing incarceration may experience disproportional rates and consequences of elder mistreatment. A public health approach to develop tools and resources that would prevent, detect, and …

Decision-Making Supports And Cognitive Decline, Rebekah Diller

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

For persons with a range of cognitive disabilities, supported decision-making, rooted in a human rights approach to disability, has emerged as a tool that permits them to make legally binding decisions and avoid guardianship. As supported decision-making policy has evolved in the United States, state statutes have primarily focused on formal agreements through which individuals can designate trusted supporters to assist in obtaining information, processing that information, and communicating a decision. This Article argues that supported decision-making has promise for preserving the autonomy of persons living with dementia, but that the model of a supported decisionmaking agreement embodied in the …

Planning For Cognitive Decline: Combining Formal Supported Decision-Making Agreements And Healthcare Power Of Attorney, Megan S. Wright

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

Patients who have impaired decision-making abilities may not be permitted to make contemporaneous medical decisions. Instead, a substitute decision maker, including a healthcare agent, may be asked to decide on the patient’s behalf even if the patient wants to participate in the medical decision making. Being marginalized in decisions made about their medical care may lead to a decline in wellbeing for these patients. But supported decision making, wherein a person with cognitive impairments receives decision-making assistance, may facilitate such patients making contemporaneous medical decisions. As supported decision-making legislation spreads throughout the United States, there are questions about how this …

The Right To 'Trip:' Navigating Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy Under The Right To Try Pathway, Caitlyn S. Greenspun

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

This Comment explores the legal, ethical, and regulatory challenges surrounding the use of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for terminally ill patients under the federal Right to Try (RTT) Act. While psychedelics like psilocybin are demonstrating extraordinary therapeutic potential, particularly in easing end-of-life psychological distress, patients remain barred from access due to the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) narrow interpretation of its authority. Through a comprehensive analysis of legislative history, regulatory frameworks, and administrative law principles, this Comment argues that the DEA's position not only misinterprets the statutory relationship between the RTT Act and the CSA, but also …

Medicare Mandates For Shared Decision Making With Patient Decision Aids: Linking Payment To Preference, Thaddeus Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Since 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has increasingly required shared decision making with evidence-based patient decision aids as an essential Medicare condition for payment. CMS is doing this because it recognizes that most healthcare is preference sensitive and value laden. So, whether treatment is “right” or “beneficial” for a patient is not only a matter of clinical expertise. It equally depends on the patient’s values, preferences, and goals. So, CMS wants to ensure that patients understand the risks, benefits, and alternatives to the healthcare that they receive and for which CMS pays. In short, under its …

The Supreme Court’S 2024–2025 Term: Eroding Public Health, Health Equity, And Access To Justice, Daniel G. Aaron, Wendy E. Parmet

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In this moment, the public health community can no longer afford the luxury of staying outside the arenas of politics and law. They must research empirically the impact of judicial decisions on health, treating the court’s decrees as a social determinant of health. They must also educate lawmakers on the impact of court decisions on people and patients, partner with policy and legal experts to inform the public about the important role that courts play in determining the health of individuals and communities, and attempt to combat the misinformation that muddles popular understandings of public health. Should we remain silent, …