A New Legal Standard for Medical Malpractice

Importance Patients in the US have persistent needs for safe, evidence-based care. Physicians in the US report fear of liability risk and the need to practice “defensive medicine.” In 2024, the American Law Institute revised the legal standard for assessing medical negligence. Understanding the implications of this change is crucial for balancing patient safety, physician autonomy, and the legal system’s role in health care. Observations The updated standard from the American Law Institute shifts away from the traditional reliance on customary practice toward a more patient-centered concept of reasonable medical care. Although this revised standard still includes elements of prevailing medical practice, it defines reasonable care as the skill and knowledge regarded as competent among similar medical clinicians under comparable circumstances and acknowledges that, in some cases, juries can override customary practices if they fall short of contemporary standards. The restatement also embraces evidence-based practice guidelines, while leaving questions open about the variations in the quality of those guidelines. The restatement makes additional recommendations regarding informed consent and other aspects of physician-patient communication. Conclusions and Relevance The new standard of care from the American Law Institute represents a shift away from strict reliance on medical custom and invites courts to incorporate evidence-based medicine into malpractice law. Although states may adopt the recommendations from the American Law Institute at different times and to varying degrees, the restatement offers health professionals and the organizations in which they practice an opportunity to reconsider how medical negligence will be assessed, and to focus more directly on promoting patient safety and improving care delivery. Nonetheless, physicians should recognize that, at least for now, many courts will continue to rely significantly on prevailing practice in assessing medical liability

April 2025 Poetry Month Display Photo 03

Image of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) wrote a famouse defense of poetry. Shelley turns to reason and imagination, defining reason as logical thought and imagination as perception, adding, “reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.” From reason and imagination, man may recognize beauty, and it is through beauty that civilization comes. Language, Shelley contends, shows humanity’s impulse toward order and harmony, which leads to an appreciation of unity and beauty. Those in “excess” of language are the poets, whose task it is to impart the pleasures of their experience and observations into poems. Shelley argues, that civilization advances and thrives with the help of poetry. This assumption then, through Shelley’s own understanding, marks the poet as a prophet, not a man dispensing forecasts but a person who “participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one.” He goes on to place poetry in the column of divine and organic process: “A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth . . . the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator.” The task of poets then is to interpret and present the poem; Shelley’s metaphor here explicates: “Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.” (poetry Foundation entry on Shelley. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69388/a-defence-of-poetryhttps://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/poetry-month-2025-photos/1005/thumbnail.jp

Public Funds, Public Functions, Private Actors: The Cognitive Dissonance of US Health Law

This chapter begins with the evolution of American medicine from a “sovereign” self-regulating profession focused on direct patient service to a large industry that serves the social sector but that, because of its professional heritage, receives extensive public subsidies without equivalent public accountability. Next, the chapter identifies regulatory dynamics in American health care governance that structurally discourage movement from the prevailing, if dissonant, private law framework to one explicitly grounded in public law. The chapter concludes by highlighting the challenges and opportunities inherent in a private law approach to what is intuitively a public law domain

Who Owns the Heat? Property Rights in Geothermal Energy

Landowners can have ownership claims to oil, gas, water, and other tangible natural resources located in their subsoil. But can they also claim rights to the thermal energy found below their land? With 50,000 times more heat energy within the top 10,000 meters (around 33,000 feet) of the Earth’s surface than contained in all of the world’s oil and natural gas resources combined, geothermal energy is a tremendously promising, clean, and renewable energy resource. Yet, ambiguities in property rights related to the development and ownership of geothermal energy resources raise questions about who is entitled to benefit from that potential.The article explores questions of ownership rights and interests in geothermal energy—an incorporeal, uncontainable, natural resource that is better defined as a characteristic of underground formations rather than as a physical or tangible thing. More broadly, it looks at the effects various theoretical approaches to ownership might have on the development of geothermal energy resources.The underlying premise of the article is that absent clear property rules for ownership in geothermal energy, commercial and public investment in this promising, clean, renewable energy resource will remain limited. In contrast, clearly defined ownership interests could have profound implications for nearly every aspect of geothermal energy development—exploration, harvesting, conversion, and transfer of this distinct energy source—as well as for decarbonizing the economy

We Give Laws a Bad Name: An Empirical Examination of How Misleading Law and PAC Names Pollute Legal Perception

Journalists and commentators have dismissed acronym-titled laws like the SAFE Act (Secure Access to Firearms Enhancement Act) and slogan-based political action committee (“PAC”) names like Americans for America as window dressing concocted by uncreative political operatives. Beyond the fact that law titles and PAC names have become punching bags in the press, they share another quality: they both appear with frequency in political ads about ballot initiatives and sometimes appear on ballots themselves. Because of their salience in election and voting scenarios, law titles and PAC names have been used tactically in an apparent effort to increase the memorability or favorability of the things they label. Often, these names fairly describe the laws with which they are associated. But a sinister practice has emerged—specifically, using misleading or inapt names. There is evidence that political operatives understand the power of names, spending considerable resources on name design. Few scholars have empirically tested whether these tactical names influence how people perceive laws, but a recent study provided evidence that they do, finding that apt acronym-titled laws are more memorable and can increase a law’s favorability under certain circumstances. That study, however, did not examine the influence of PAC names, nor did it test inapt names. We designed a novel experiment to fill this void by testing two common tactical naming types: acronym short titles and slogan-based PAC names with apt and inapt versions. The results of our experiment are disturbing. Our most important finding is that participants’ opinions about laws were profoundly altered by the names of PACs that sponsored those laws and that the effect was most pronounced with inaptly named PACs. Misleading PAC names increased a law’s favorability when those names falsely signaled compatibility with a participant’s political preference and decreased favorability when they falsely signaled incompatibility with a participant’s political preference. As for acronym laws, we observed, consistent with prior work, that acronym names could influence a law’s favorability in a broader array of circumstances than were observed in that prior work. Worse yet, trying to limit misleadingly named PACs will face significant constitutional impediments. An outright ban on the practice would likely run afoul of the First Amendment. Requiring disclaimers that warn the public of the unreliability of PAC names would likely fare better, but neither their constitutionality nor their effectiveness is assured

April 2025 Poetry Month Display Photo of Kristen David Adams

Image, on display April 2025, of Kristen David Adams, a member of the law faculty at Stetson University College of Law since 2000. Professor Adams currently holds the William Reece Smith, Jr. Distinguished Professorship. Adams is an elected member of the American Law Institute. She has authored 10 books and more than 20 law review articles. She teaches courses in property, payment systems, and law through the lens of poetry.https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/poetry-month-2025-photos/1006/thumbnail.jp

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Photo of The book Lawyers, Poets, and that World We Call Law , edited by James Elkins from which poem Hadley v. Baxendale (by James McKenna) was drawn.https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/poetry-month-2025-photos/1010/thumbnail.jp

Population: The Who of Biodiversity Law

This Article investigates the impacts of human population, including distribution and growth, on biodiversity at every level—the biosphere, ecosystems, communities, populations, and individual organisms. It assesses how legal frameworks around the world address the pressures of human population on biodiversity. This Article explores how factors such as population size and migration contribute to biodiversity loss, with a focus on diverse regions around the globe. This Article offers a comparative overview of population-related laws in regions including North and South America, Europe, Oceania, Asia, and Africa. Key legislation, like the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act, the UK’s Environment Act 2021, and Norway’s Climate Change Act, is evaluated for its effectiveness in managing human population-driven biodiversity loss. International agreements like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are also reviewed for their role in coordinating global efforts to mitigate the ecological impacts on biodiversity of the human population. Based on this analysis, this Article suggests new legal approaches to integrate population policies with biodiversity conservation more efficiently. It demonstrates the importance of aligning urban planning, resource management, and climate adaptation efforts to reduce biodiversity loss. In conclusion, this Article proposes an updated legal framework to reconcile human population pressures with the protection of biodiversity at every level, including the biosphere, ecosystems, communities, populations, and individual organisms

Black History Month Book Display

Collection of books on display commemorating the celebration of Black History Month on display in the law library from February through March 2025.https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/black-history-month-2025-photos/1000/thumbnail.jp