Life and Death Decisions in the Nursery: Standards and Criteria for Withholding Lifesaving Treatment from Infants

That the conduct of human affairs does not always conform to the requirements of the law is a surprise to no one. But in few areas of critical life and death decisions is there such a disparity between commonly recognized principles of law and developing medical practice as exists in the area of withholding lifesaving medical care from infants, notably defective infants. The law is said to restrict physicians and parents from withholding lifesaving treatment from infants for the purpose of causing their deaths. Yet it is reported that it is not uncommon for lifesaving treatment to be denied severely defective infants, and that thousands of infant deaths result each year from this lack of treatment. This disparity between the law and practice may result from confusion in the medical community about the legal standards for nontreatment decisions, or from the absence of any effective mechanism to enforce the law. The purpose of this article is to clarify important issues regarding the legal standards which should be used in making treatment decisions, and to suggest ways that such legal standards might be enforced

Life and Death Decisions in the Nursery: Standards and Criteria for Withholding Lifesaving Treatment from Infants

That the conduct of human affairs does not always conform to the requirements of the law is a surprise to no one. But in few areas of critical life and death decisions is there such a disparity between commonly recognized principles of law and developing medical practice as exists in the area of withholding lifesaving medical care from infants, notably defective infants. The law is said to restrict physicians and parents from withholding lifesaving treatment from infants for the purpose of causing their deaths. Yet it is reported that it is not uncommon for lifesaving treatment to be denied severely defective infants, and that thousands of infant deaths result each year from this lack of treatment. This disparity between the law and practice may result from confusion in the medical community about the legal standards for nontreatment decisions, or from the absence of any effective mechanism to enforce the law. The purpose of this article is to clarify important issues regarding the legal standards which should be used in making treatment decisions, and to suggest ways that such legal standards might be enforced

The Transformation of the Attorney-Client Privilege: In Search of an Ideological Reconciliation of Individualism, the Adversary System, and the Corporate Client\u27s SEC Disclosure Obligations

The attorney-client privilege recently has undergone significant social, political, and ideological changes. This Article examines inherent tensions in the legal system as they are reflected in the attorney-client privilege-disaccord between individual rights and the good of society, the analogy between the corporation and the individual, and the conflict between the individual\u27s right to privacy and mandatory public disclosure laws imposed on corporations. The Article questions whether the privilege will continue to provide meaningful protection to the attorney-client relationship within the modern legal system, and concludes that, to achieve this goal, courts should use a more flexible and adaptable approach to the privilege

RECOGNITION OF VIOLATIONS OF WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS UNDER THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE CONTEXT OF RESTRICTIVE ABORTION REGIMES

This thesis considers the possibility that the European Court of Human Rights is developing a role in relation to the restriction of access to abortion services, and impairment of health-care provision linked to such restriction, in Poland and Ireland. Since such lack of access is strongly associated with forms of suffering for women that can readily be captured in terms of rights-violations, the European Court of Human Rights has a current and potential role in advancing recognition in certain circumstances of rights of access to abortion in line with the general European consensus. This thesis sets out to explore the extent to which Strasbourg has already given recognition to women’s reproductive choices in rights-based terms, and the potential, based on established Strasbourg principles, for it to take further steps in that direction in future. A range of potential rights-based claims will be considered but, clearly, such recognition could most readily occur under the respect for private and/or family life heads of Article 8 in terms of health and the freedom to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy; but also relevant are rights to be free from inhuman or degrading treatment under Article 3 and freedom from discrimination under Article 14

The Allure and Peril of Genetics Exceptionalism: Do We Need Special Genetics Legislation?

This Article asserts that genetic information is not unique and that concerns about abuses of information should not be limited to genetic information, but should extend to other medical information. Not only is genetic information like other medical information, but treating the two differently under the law leads to unintended inequities between individuals and classes, which raises serious questions about the propriety of public policy based on genetics exceptionalism

(E)racing the Fourth Amendment

It\u27s been almost two years since I pledged allegiance to the United States of America - that is to say, became an American citizen. Before that, I was a permanent resident of America and a citizen of the United Kingdom. Yet, I became a black American long before I acquired American citizenship. Unlike citizenship, black racial naturalization was always available to me, even as I tried to make myself unavailable for that particular Americanization process. Given the negative images of black Americans on 1970s British television and the intra-racial tensions between blacks in the U.K. and blacks in America, I was not eager, upon my arrival to the United States, to assert a black American identity. My parents had taught me better than that. But I became a black American anyway. Before I freely embraced that identity it was ascribed to me. This ascription is part of a broader social practice wherein all of us are made intelligible via racial categorization. My intelligibility was skin deep. More particularly, it was linked to the social construction of blackness, a social construction whose phenotypic reach I could not escape. Whether I liked it or not, my everyday social encounters were going to reflect standard racial scripts about black American life