Medical Jurisprudence Commons^™

Justice Blackmun, Abortion, And The Myth Of Medical Independence, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article I test this conventional wisdom by explicitly placing medicine at the center of the analysis of Justice Blackmun's opinions on abortion, and then interrogating the connection between law and medicine. Using the Blackmun papers opened to the public in 2004 and augmented by other documents and sources, I examine four critical periods in Blackmun's life: his years at Mayo; his participation in a series of medicine-related cases prior to Roe; the period of intra-Court dynamics in Roe; and the post-Roe period in which a split developed between Blackmun and Roe's critics over the use of medical rhetoric. …

The Right To Die: The Broken Road From Quinlan To Schiavo, Annette E. Clark

Faculty Articles

This article discusses the controversial right-to-die law, and the prominent cases surrounding it. It critically outlines various case outcomes with respect to the law, and discusses seminal development the law has seen.

Reconsidering The Medical Expert Witness System, Yunwei Jiang

LLM Theses and Essays

The expert witness is indispensable in a medical malpractice case. However, there are three main defects in the currently existing expert witness system. One is incompetence of expert witnesses. Another is professional negligence of expert witnesses. The other is dishonesty of expert witnesses. To make the expert witness system more efficient, this article examines currently existing rules and offers some proposals regarding the three issues. For the first one, the suggestion of this article is to rely on the standards of expert qualification and admitting expert testimony. For the second one, this article distinguishes expert witnesses from lay witnesses, and …

Liability, Regulation And Policy In Surgical Innovation: The Cutting Edge Of Research And Therapy, Anna C. Mastroianni

Articles

This article examines the implications of the foregoing competing claims from a U.S. legal perspective, focusing particularly on how the legal system addresses patient safety concerns and autonomous decision-making of surgeons in the context of surgical innovation. The lack of oversight and the risks borne by patients during surgeons' development and subsequent refinement of a novel procedure must be balanced with the need to encourage medical progress through the development of improved techniques designed to benefit the health of current and future patients. This article argues that current reliance on the medical malpractice system and the federal regulatory system of …

Redefining Physicians' Duties: An Argument For Eliminating The Physician-Patient Relationship Requirement In Actions For Medical Malpractice, Patrick D. Blake

Georgia Law Review

Nearly every state requires a patient to prove the existence of a formal physician-patient relationship in order to proceed with a claim for medical malpractice. In the absence of such a relationship, a physician's actions are measured by an ordinary negligence standard instead of the professional standard of care. Because courts have traditionally held that independent medical examinations, such as pre-employment health screenings, do not give rise to formal physician-patient relationships, individuals undergoing these examinations have been prevented from bringing malpractice claims against physicians who fail to disclose important health information detected during the examination. Recently, a small number of …

Disclosure And Fair Resolution Of Adverse Events, Carol B. Liebman, Chris Stern Hyman

Faculty Scholarship

The health care system in the United States is in turmoil. Patients are being harmed by too many, often fatal, mistakes. At the same time, physicians and hospitals are trying to cope with a costly medical malpractice crisis. These two crises create a vicious cycle. When something goes wrong in patient care, physicians and hospitals withhold apologies and offer as little information as possible for fear that anything they say may be used against them should patients or family members sue. Family members, in many cases, sue not only to receive compensation for injuries, but also in search of answers …

Reinvigorating First Year Criminal Law: Integrating Mental Disability Issues Into The Criminal Law Course, Linda C. Fentiman

ExpressO

This article explores how mental disability issues can be incorporated into a traditional criminal law class, in order to enrich student understanding of both mental disability law and criminal law doctrine. The intersection of mental disability with the doctrinal aspects of criminal law can be broken into five major categories: 1) the justifications for punishment; 2) the definition of crime in general, e.g., the requirements of a voluntary act, mens rea, and causation; 3) the definition of particular crimes, such as murder, manslaughter, rape, and burglary; 4) defenses to crime, including mistake of law and of fact, as well as …

Deconstruction's Legal Career, Jack M. Balkin

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Custody Battle Over Cryogenically Preserved Embryos After Divorce: Advocating For Infertile Women’S Rights, Cori S. Annapolen

ExpressO

This paper focuses on the struggles that infertile women face to achieve motherhood because their rights are underrepresented in the American court system. It specifically centers on how the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF) helps infertile women conceive children, but then details the problems that increasing technology now causes for these women after they freeze embryos and then divorce. Because the courts of only four states have determined who gets custody of these embryos after a divorce, and because the divorce rate and the number of couples utilizing IVF are increasing, future states will likely be forced to answer …

How It Works: Sobriety Sentencing, The Constitution And Alcoholics Anonymous. A Perspective From Aa's Founding Community, Max E. Dehn

ExpressO

This paper analyzes the public health as well as constitutional issues that arise when persons are required by courts to participate in 12-step recovery programs.

An Economic Assessment Of Damage Caps In Medical Malpracitce Litigation Imposed By State Laws And The Implications For Federal Policy And Law, Paul Wazzan

ExpressO

Many states have implemented laws which limit non-economic (e.g., pain and suffering) damages as a result of medical malpractice. These laws are seen by proponents as reducing medical malpractice insurance costs and preserving access to health care – especially for lower income individuals. Opponents believe that individuals are harmed through being prevented from seeking a full measure of redress for medical malpractice incidents, by reducing access to the court system, and that these laws simply enrich insurance companies and doctors.

Federal lawmakers are currently studying the potential effect of uniform medical malpractice damage limits at the national level. It is …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

“Racially-Tailored” Medicine Unraveled, Sharona Hoffman

ExpressO

In June 2005, the FDA approved BiDil, a heart failure medication that is labeled for use only by African-Americans and thus, is the first treatment of its kind. The drug likely portends a future of growing interest in “race-based” medicine. This phenomenon is emerging at the same time that scientists, in light of the Human Genome Project, are reaching an understanding that “race” has no biological meaning, and consequently, “racially-tailored” medicine is both puzzling and troubling.

This Article explores the reasons for the new focus on “racial-profiling” in medicine. It analyzes the risks and dangers of this approach, including medical …

On Hastening Death Without Violating Legal Or Moral Prohibitions, Norman L. Cantor

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

While the vast majority of fatally afflicted persons have a powerful wish to remain alive, some stricken persons may, for any of a host of reasons, desire to hasten death. Some persons are afflicted with chronic degenerative diseases that take a grievous toll. Chronic pain may be severe and intractable, anxiety about a future treatment regimen may be distressing, and helplessness may erode personal dignity and soil the image that the afflicted person wants to leave behind.

A dying patient’s interest in hastening death is often said to be in tension with a bedrock social principle that respect for sanctity …

Mental Disorder As An Exemption From The Death Penalty: The Aba-Irr Task Force Recommendations, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Task Force on Mental Disability and the Death Penalty (Task Force) established by the Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section of the American Bar Association (ABA-IRR) has proposed that the ABA adopt three recommendations concerning the role of mental disability in capital cases. The first two recommendations call for a prohibition on execution of offenders whose mental disorder rendered them less culpable at the time of the offense, and the third would prohibit execution of those whose mental disability currently renders them incompetent to pursue appeals or to be executed. This Article discusses the first two, culpability-related, recommendations. With respect …

Pursuing Justice For The Mentally Disabled, Grant H. Morris

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

This article considers whether lawyers act as zealous advocates when they represent mentally disordered, involuntarily committed patients who wish to assert their right to refuse treatment with psychotropic medication. After discussing a study that clearly demonstrates that lawyers do not do so, the article explores the reasons for this inappropriate behavior. Michael Perlin characterizes the problem as “sanism,” which he describes as an irrational prejudice against mentally disabled persons of the same quality and character as other irrational prejudices that cause and are reflected in prevailing social attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry. The article critiques Perlin’s characterization …

The Game Of Pleasant Diversion: Can We Level The Playing Field For The Disabled Athlete And Maintain The National Pastime, In The Aftermath Of Pga Tour, Inc. V. Martin: An Empirical Study Of The Disabled Athlete, Donald H. Stone

All Faculty Scholarship

Kenny Walker, a deaf football player; Jim Abbott, a one-handed professional baseball player; Tom Dempsey, a physically disabled professional football kicker; Brad Doty, a paralyzed auto racer; and Nick Ackerman, a wrestler with amputated legs, have all competed at the highest level of sports. Persons with mental illness, individuals who are blind, and students with hearing impairments are seeking an opportunity to compete in fair competition with their non-disabled competitors. Can this occur in a fair, open, and just manner between competing athletes?

Does the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 ("ADA"), the landmark civil rights act protecting an individual …

Jacobson V Massachusetts: It's Not Your Great-Great-Grandfather's Public Health Law, Wendy K. Mariner, George J. Annas, Leonard H. Glantz

Faculty Scholarship

Jacobson v Massachusetts, a 1905 US Supreme Court decision, raised questions about the power of state government to protect the public’s health and the Constitution’s protection of personal liberty. We examined conceptions about state power and personal liberty in Jacobson and later cases that expanded, superseded, or even ignored those ideas.

Public health and constitutional law have evolved to better protect both health and human rights. States’ sovereign power to make laws of all kinds has not changed in the past century. What has changed is the Court’s recognition of the importance of individual liberty and how it limits …

Cross-Examining The Brain: A Legal Analysis Of Neural Imaging For Credibility Impeachment, Charles N. W. Keckler

ExpressO

The last decade has seen remarkable process in understanding ongoing psychological processes at the neurobiological level, progress that has been driven technologically by the spread of functional neuroimaging devices, especially magnetic resonance imaging, that have become the research tools of a theoretically sophisticated cognitive neuroscience. As this research turns to specification of the mental processes involved in interpersonal deception, the potential evidentiary use of material produced by devices for detecting deception, long stymied by the conceptual and legal limitations of the polygraph, must be re-examined. Although studies in this area are preliminary, and I conclude they have not yet satisfied …

Duties To Subjects In Clinical Research, Carl H. Coleman

Vanderbilt Law Review

Physicians who conduct clinical research with human subjects face a profound conflict in professional roles. As physicians, they are committed to promoting the best interests of current patients. As researchers, however, their goal is to produce generalizable knowledge by studying the effects of interventions in broad cohorts of subjects.' Because producing generalizable knowledge often requires actions that are inconsistent with the best interests of the individuals enrolled in a study, these dual objectives often come into conflict. In such situations, where should the physician-researcher's loyalties lie? While this question has long been of interest to physicians and bioethicists, it has …

The Medical Malpractice Debate: The Jury As Scapegoat (Symposium), Nancy S. Marder

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Learning To Crawl: The Use Of Voluntary Caps On Damages In Medical Malpractice Litigation, Ralph Peeples, Catherine Harris

ExpressO

Medical malpractice insurance “crises” seem to recur with distressing frequency. Indeed, the escalating costs of malpractice insurance premiums have become the focal point for advocates of tort reform. While we know quite a bit about the medical malpractice system, we know very little about what might work to fix things. Many reforms have been tried; little has worked. The two most commonly attempted reforms – at least at present- are legislatively imposed caps on non-economic damages (i.e., pain and suffering) and the use of screening panels. Neither of these alternatives offers a satisfactory resolution to the problem.

This article proposes …

Note: A Painful Catch-22: Why Tort Liability For Inadequate Pain Management Will Make For Bad Medicine, James R. Blaufuss

William Mitchell Law Review

Part I of this note reviews current issues relating to pain treatment. Part II examines theoretical justifications of proposed tort liability for inadequate pain management. Part III examines how pain mismanagement does not fit within traditional notions of medical malpractice. Part IV studies the issues relating to a physician’s role as “gate-keeper” for opioids and suggests why tort liability could compromise this legislatively imposed role. Part V examines the issue of pain management in the context of end-of-life care. Part VI discusses current shifts in pain management philosophies and explains how these movements will effectuate the changes suggested by advocates …

Stemming The Tide Of Stem Cell Research: The Bush Compromise, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1061 (2005), Patrick Walsh

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Vanishing Trial: Land Mine On The Mediation Landscape Or Opportunity For Evolution: Ruminations On The Future Of Mediation Practice, Kimberlee K. Kovach

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Several decades ago, mediation developed as an alternative to the use of courts for resolving disputes. Over the years, the use of mediation to resolve lawsuits has greatly increased. The reasons for this evolution are numerous, and the primary underlying impetus for the use of mediation has, in many cases, impacted just how the process is conducted. For example, some view mediation as a process which provides individuals or groups engaged in a dispute or conflict with a collaborative and flexible process for dispute resolution. This view of the process also encourages party participation and empowerment, which often allows relationships …

Patients Beware: Preemption Of Common Law Claims Under The Medical Device Amendments, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 75 (2005), Michael P. Dinatale

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Public Use Or Experimental Use: Are Clinical Trials Susceptible To Another Attack Similar To That In Smithkline Beecham Corp. V. Apotex Corp., 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 149 (2005), Nimalka Wickramasekera

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Medical Malpractice And The Tort System In Illinois (Report To The Illinois State Bar Association, May 2005), Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

A report to the Illinois State Bar Association of a study examining the incidence, frequency, size of verdicts and other aspects of the medical malpractice system in Illinois. The study looked at statewide data where available, concentrating on Cook and DuPage counties, and Madison and St. Clair counties. The study concludes that the Illinois tort system does not appear to be the cause of the undisputed fact that doctors' liability insurance premiums showed dramatic rises.

The Intersection Of Evaluation Be Mediators And Informed Consent: Warning The Unwary, Lela P. Love, John W. Cooley

Articles

No abstract provided.

Minnesota: Leading The Way On Canadian Prescription Medicine Importation, Kevin Goodno, Karen Janisch

William Mitchell Law Review

In the United States, about $160 billion is spent on prescription medicines each year, with Minnesotans spending about $3 billion. The costs of prescription medicines receive so much attention in large part because, although prescription medicine costs constitute only 10.5% of total health care spending, they account for 23% of the total out-of-pocket costs that people incur when purchasing health care. Minnesota has been a leader in controlling prescription medicine costs. It has aggressively used purchasing pools when possible, and encouraged the use of lower cost, generic prescription medicines when appropriate. Even with these efforts to control costs, prescription medicines …