In early 2017, Nevada amended its Uniform Determination of Death Act, in order to clarify the neurologic criteria for the determination of death. The amendments stipulate that a determination of death is a clinical decision that does not require familial consent and that the appropriate standard for determining neurologic death is the American Academy of Neurology’s guidelines. Once a physician makes such a determination of death, the Nevada amendments require the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment within twenty-four hours with limited exceptions. (...) Neurologists have generally supported Nevada’s amendments for clarifying the diagnostic standard and limiting the ability of family members to challenge it. However, it is more appropriate to view the Nevada amendments with concern. Even though the primary purpose of the UDDA is to ensure that all functions of a person’s entire brain have ceased, the AAN guidelines do not accurately assess this. In addition, by characterizing the determination of death as solely a clinical decision, the Nevada legislature has improperly ignored the doctrine of informed consent, as well as the beliefs of particular faiths and cultures that reject brain death. Rather than resolving controversies regarding brain death determinations, the Nevada amendments may instead instigate numerous constitutional challenges. (shrink)

In early 2017, Nevada amended its Uniform Determination of Death Act, in order to clarify the neurologic criteria for the determination of death. The amendments stipulate that a determination of death is a clinical decision that does not require familial consent and that the appropriate standard for determining neurologic death is the American Academy of Neurology’s guidelines. Once a physician makes such a determination of death, the Nevada amendments require the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment within twenty-four hours with limited exceptions. (...) Neurologists have generally supported Nevada’s amendments for clarifying the diagnostic standard and limiting the ability of family members to challenge it. However, it is more appropriate to view the Nevada amendments with concern. Even though the primary purpose of the UDDA is to ensure that all functions of a person’s entire brain have ceased, the AAN guidelines do not accurately assess this. In addition, by characterizing the determination of death as solely a clinical decision, the Nevada legislature has improperly ignored the doctrine of informed consent, as well as the beliefs of particular faiths and cultures that reject brain death. Rather than resolving controversies regarding brain death determinations, the Nevada amendments may instead instigate numerous constitutional challenges. (shrink)

This article presents the importance of and concomitant ethical and legal concerns regarding the implementation of team-based work system designs in American corporations. It concludes by reconciling some of the important issues and providing direction for future action.

Improving how health care providers respond to medical injury requires an understanding of patients’ experiences. Although many injured patients strongly desire to be heard, research rarely involves them. Institutional review boards worry about harming participants by asking them to revisit traumatic events, and hospital staff worry about provoking lawsuits. Institutions’ reluctance to approve this type of research has slowed progress toward responses to injuries that are better able to meet patients’ needs. In 2015–2016, we were able to surmount these challenges (...) and interview 92 injured patients and families in the USA and New Zealand. This article explores whether the ethical and medico‐legal concerns are, in fact, well‐founded. Consistent with research about trauma‐research‐related distress, our participants’ accounts indicate that the pervasive fears about retraumatization are unfounded. Our experience also suggests that because being heard is an important (but often unmet) need for injured patients, talking provides psychological benefits and may decrease rather than increase the impetus to sue. Our article makes recommendations to institutional review boards and researchers. The benefits to responsibly conducted research with injured patients outweigh the risks to participants and institutions. (shrink)

The paper deals with the use of predictive genetic tests in medical research. I limit my discussion to those advances in genetics which try to overcome the limits represented by our genetic make-up, in particular by gene mutations that lead, or could lead, to the development of genetic diseases. Besides the ethical issues concerning the topic of the current discussion, the reader will also find an evaluation of the legal provisions elaborated at the different levels of the legal (...) order. The aim of this evaluation is to find out which model of Law is being adopted in bioethical issues like the one discussed in this paper. The paper underlines and argues how Law can contribute to value and to spread an ethics of responsibility. Tekst se bavi primenom prediktivnih analiza u medicinskim istrazivanjima. Diskusija se odnosi samo na one vidove genetike kojima se pokusavaju prevazici ogranicenja sadrzana u nasem genetskom sklopu, pre svega ogranicenja koja su izazvana mutacijama gena koja izazivaju ili mogu izazvati pojavu genetskih oboljenja. Pored etickih pitanja vezanih za temu ove diskusije, tekst razmatra i pravna resenja s razlicitih nivoa pravog poretka. Cilj procene pravnih resenja je da utvrdi koji je pravni model usvojen u slucaju bioetickih pitanja kojima se bavi ovaj tekst. U tekstu se naglasava da zakon moze doprineti afirmisanju i sirenju etike odgovornosti. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an approved treatment for neurological diseases and a promising one for psychiatric conditions, which may produce spectacular results very quickly. It is also a powerful tool for brain research and exploration. Beyond an overview of the ethical and legal literature on this topic, this paper aims at showing that DBS is a compelling example for ethical-legal reflection, as it combines a highly technical surgical procedure, a complex active medical device and neuromodulation of the (...) human brain to restore lost abilities caused by a chronic and evolving disease. Some of the ethical and legal issues raised by DBS are not specific, but shed new light on medical ethics and law. Others are more DBS-specific, as they are linked to the intricacies of research and treatment, to the need to tune the device, to the patients’ control over the device and its effects and to the involvement of family caregivers. (shrink)

Often, knowledge engineers become so involved in the development process of the expert system that they fail to look further down the road toward the expert system's institutionalization within the organization. Institutionalization is an important component of the expert system planning process. More specifically, the legal issues associated with expert systems development and deployment are critical institutionalization factors. This paper looks at some expert system institutionalization guidelines, and then focuses on legal considerations.

Background: Debates over legalisation of physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia often warn of a “slippery slope”, predicting abuse of people in vulnerable groups. To assess this concern, the authors examined data from Oregon and the Netherlands, the two principal jurisdictions in which physician-assisted dying is legal and data have been collected over a substantial period.Methods: The data from Oregon comprised all annual and cumulative Department of Human Services reports 1998–2006 and three independent studies; the data from the Netherlands comprised all (...) four government-commissioned nationwide studies of end-of-life decision making and specialised studies. Evidence of any disproportionate impact on 10 groups of potentially vulnerable patients was sought.Results: Rates of assisted dying in Oregon and in the Netherlands showed no evidence of heightened risk for the elderly, women, the uninsured , people with low educational status, the poor, the physically disabled or chronically ill, minors, people with psychiatric illnesses including depression, or racial or ethnic minorities, compared with background populations. The only group with a heightened risk was people with AIDS. While extralegal cases were not the focus of this study, none have been uncovered in Oregon; among extralegal cases in the Netherlands, there was no evidence of higher rates in vulnerable groups.Conclusions: Where assisted dying is already legal, there is no current evidence for the claim that legalised PAS or euthanasia will have disproportionate impact on patients in vulnerable groups. Those who received physician-assisted dying in the jurisdictions studied appeared to enjoy comparative social, economic, educational, professional and other privileges. (shrink)

The United States has recently made significant and positive civil rights gains for LGB people, including expanded recognition of marriages between people of the same sex. Among the central tropes that have emerged in the struggle for the rights of LGB people are that they are “born that way,” that sexual orientations cannot change, and that one's sexual orientation is not affected by choice. Writer Andrew Sullivan put it this way: “[H]omosexuality is an essentially involuntary condition that can neither be (...) denied nor permanently repressed.… [S]o long as homosexual adults as citizens insist on the involuntary nature of their condition, it becomes politically impossible to deny or ignore the fact of homosexuality.… [The strategy for obtaining LGB rights is to] seek full public equality for those who, through no fault of their own, happen to be homosexual.”This idea of linking LGB rights to empirical claims about sexual orientations has become so central that casting doubt on these claims is, in many circles, tantamount to opposing LGB rights. Nonetheless, claims about innateness, immutability, and lack of choice about sexual orientation should not be the primary basis for LGB rights. (shrink)

Human microbiome research has revealed that legions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi live on our skin and within the cavities of our bodies. New knowledge from these recent studies shows that humans are superorganisms and that the microbiome is indispensible to our lives and our health. This volume explores some of the science on the human microbiome and considers the ethical, legal, and social concerns that are raised by this research.

The human microbiome is the bacteria, viruses, and fungi that cover our skin, line our intestines, and flourish in our body cavities. Work on the human microbiome is new, but it is quickly becoming a leading area of biomedical research. What scientists are learning about humans and our microbiomes could change medical practice by introducing new treatment modalities. This new knowledge redefines us as superorganisms comprised of the human body and the collection of microbes that inhabit it and reveals how (...) much we are a part of our environment. The understanding that microbes are not only beneficial but sometimes necessary for survival recasts our interaction with microbes from adversarial to neighborly. This volume explores some of the science that makes human microbiome research possible. It then considers ethical, legal, and social concerns raised by microbiome research. Chapters explore issues related to personal identity, property rights, and privacy. The authors reflect on how human microbiome research challenges reigning views on public health and research ethics. They also address the need for thoughtful policies and procedures to guide the use of the biobanked human samples required for advancing this new domain of research. In the course of these explorations, they introduce examples from the history of biomedical science and recent legal cases that shed light on the issues and inform the policy recommendations they offer at the end of each topic's discussion.This volume is the product of an NIH Human Microbiome Project grant. It represents three years of conversations focused on consensus formation by the twenty-seven members of the interdisciplinary Microbiome Working Group. (shrink)

Vice crimes, crimes prohibited in part because they are viewed as morally corrupting, engage legal theorists because they reveal importantly contrasting views between liberals and virtue-centered theorists on the very limits of legitimate state action. Yet advocates and opponents alike focus on the role law can play in suppressing personal vice; the role of law is seen as suppressing licentiousness, sloth, greed etc. The most powerful advocates of the position that the law must nurture good character often draw on (...) Aristotelian theories of virtue to ground the connection between law and virtue. While Aristotle believed that law and character were linked, it is ironic to note that he did not argue for the position evidenced in our vice laws that law was likely to succeed in instilling virtue. Indeed, Aristotle thought the project of using law to instill private virtue was nearly certain to fail. Aristotle’s deep concern was not for the way law protected private virtue within each person but the way law had to protect civic virtue between citizens. This article argues that even from its foundations, the project of vice crimes as moral instruction is misconceived. The use of law for overly instrumental or narrow reasons opens law and legal institutions to abuse and factionalism. Lawyers, judges and others specially connected to law must first and foremost aim at addressing “legal vices,” vices internal to the institutions of law. Particularly, increasing factionalism and instrumentalism which disconnects law from the pursuit of the common good threatens our civic bonds. Most importantly, where civic bonds are disrupted, citizens have no reason to remain law abiding. The striking lesson, captured both in ancient philosophy and modern history, is that when legal vices grow unchecked and factions use the law to pursue narrow interests, ultimately law abidingness is corrupted and interest groups harm themselves as much as others. (shrink)

This paper deals with translating legal terminology concerning child maintenance from Polish to Swedish. The analysis covers selected terms regulated in the Polish civil law and their possible Swedish equivalents. The method used is based on the parameterisation of legal terms, which allows the specification of terms by selected parameters, which are understood as mutually exclusive properties. The parameterised equivalents are analysed in the context of various types of recipients. This provides the basis for the choice of appropriate (...) translation strategies. The author also discusses pragmatic equivalents featured in Rikstermbanken, the Swedish national terminological database, and those used in practice. (shrink)

In this paper I analyse the claim according to which law is objective. After clarifying the philosophically relevant meaning of this claim , I distinguish several aspects of the thesis, concerning, respectively legal truth , legal error , legal determinacy and the metaphysical status of legal entities . Then, I take into consideration the phenomenology of our legal practice and the apparent support it gives to claims of legal objectivity. Finally, I stress the connection (...) between legal objectivity and normativity and suggest that legal objectivity reduces to the conclusiveness of legal reasoning. (shrink)

Scholarship in experimental jurisprudence has reported surprising findings about various concepts of legal significance: _acting intentionally_, _causation_, _consent_, _knowledge, recklessness_, _reasonableness,_ and _law_ itself. Often, these studies examine laypeople’s ordinary concepts and draw broader conclusions about legal experts’ concepts. This Article questions such inferences, from empirical findings about ordinary concepts to conclusions about the concepts of those with legal expertise. It presents a case study concerning what it means to act _intentionally._ An experiment examines intentionality judgments across (...) four populations (N = 774): laypeople, law students, non-law students, and United States judges. Legal training affected judgments in three ways that are consistent with the acquisition of a distinctive legal concept. This case study supports the Article’s broader claim: Laypeople’s ordinary concepts are not equivalent to experts’ legal concepts. The acquisition of legal concepts is an important form of legal expertise. (shrink)

Large-scale, interoperable biobanks are an increasingly important asset in today's life science research and, as a result, multiple types of biobanks are being established around the globe with very different financial, organizational and legal set-ups. With interdisciplinary chapters written by lawyers, sociologists, doctors and biobank practitioners, Global Genes, Local Concerns identifies and discusses the most pressing issues in contemporary biobanking.This timely book addresses pressing questions such as: how do national biobanks best contribute to translational research?; What are the (...) opportunities and challenges that current regulations present for translational use of biobanks?; How does inter-biobank coordination and collaboration occur on various levels?; and how could academic and industrial exploitation, ownership and IPR issues be addressed and facilitated? Identifying that biobanks' foundational and operational set-ups should be legally and ethically sound, while at the same time reflecting the hopes and concerns of all the involved stakeholders, this book contributes to the continued development of international biobanking by highlighting and analysing the complexities in this important area of research.Academics in the fields of law and ethics, health law and biomedical law, as well as biobank managers and policymakers will find this insightful book a stimulating and engaging read. (shrink)

Battin et al examined data on deaths from physician-assisted suicide in Oregon and on PAS and voluntary euthanasia in The Netherlands. This paper reviews the methodology used in their examination and questions the conclusions drawn from it—namely, that there is for the most part ‘no evidence of heightened risk’ to vulnerable people from the legalisation of PAS or VE. This critique focuses on the evidence about PAS in Oregon. It suggests that vulnerability to PAS cannot be categorised simply by reference (...) to race, gender or other socioeconomic status and that the impetus to seek PAS derives from factors, including emotional state, reactions to loss, personality type and situation and possibly to PAS contagion, all factors that apply across the social spectrum. It also argues, on the basis of official reports from the Oregon Health Department on the working of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act since 2008, that, contrary to the conclusions drawn by Battin et al, the highest resort to PAS in Oregon is among the elderly and, on the basis of research published since Battin et al reported, that there is reason to believe that some terminally ill patients in Oregon are taking their own lives with lethal drugs supplied by doctors despite having had depression at the time when they were assessed and cleared for PAS. (shrink)

This article examines bioethics in Tanzania, particularly in relation to the HIV/AIDS epidemic for the following reasons: First, not only is HIV/AIDS the most alarming health problem in most parts of Africa, but the complexity of issues involved in medical and research ethics clearly illustrates the various levels of problems that bioethics—more precisely, both professional medical ethics and research ethics—faces in a poor, developing country. The article defends uniformity in the general, international bioethical guidelines but calls for wider discussion in (...) their applicability in different economic and social conditions by claiming that in the present debates the issues of distributive justice, culture, and individual professional judgment have been tangled together in a manner that tends to justify double standards in practice. To avoid this confusion there is a need to find a more coherent approach to bioethics that brings together the normative requirements set by international guidelines, national policy planning, social ethics, and professional medical ethics. a. (shrink)

Legal liabilities pertaining to the identification and selection of domain experts is an issue that could adversely impact expert systems developers. Problems pertaining to flawed knowledge, improperly defined expertise, and behavioural and psychological impediments are just some of the issues. This paper examines the torts of strict products liability and negligence that system developers could incur as a result of expert-related difficulties. Parallels from legal scholars and federal and state court decisions are discussed relevant to expert system projects (...) and developers. The paper concludes with a presentation of steps that systems developers can take to minimize potential legal liability. (shrink)

Transparency is now a fundamental principle for data processing under the General Data Protection Regulation. We explore what this requirement entails for artificial intelligence and automated decision-making systems. We address the topic of transparency in artificial intelligence by integrating legal, social, and ethical aspects. We first investigate the ratio legis of the transparency requirement in the General Data Protection Regulation and its ethical underpinnings, showing its focus on the provision of information and explanation. We then discuss the pitfalls with (...) respect to this requirement by focusing on the significance of contextual and performative factors in the implementation of transparency. We show that human–computer interaction and human-robot interaction literature do not provide clear results with respect to the benefits of transparency for users of artificial intelligence technologies due to the impact of a wide range of contextual factors, including performative aspects. We conclude by integrating the information- and explanation-based approach to transparency with the critical contextual approach, proposing that transparency as required by the General Data Protection Regulation in itself may be insufficient to achieve the positive goals associated with transparency. Instead, we propose to understand transparency relationally, where information provision is conceptualized as communication between technology providers and users, and where assessments of trustworthiness based on contextual factors mediate the value of transparency communications. This relational concept of transparency points to future research directions for the study of transparency in artificial intelligence systems and should be taken into account in policymaking. (shrink)

Ex aequo et bono compensations refer to tribunal’s compensations that cannot be determined exactly according to the rule of law, in which case the judge relies on an estimate that seems fair for the case at hand. Such cases are prone to legal uncertainty, given the subjectivity that is inherent to the concept of fairness. We show how basic principles from statistics and machine learning may be used to reduce legal uncertainty in ex aequo et bono judicial decisions. (...) For a given type of ex aequo et bono dispute, we consider two general stages in estimating the compensation. First, the stage where there is significant disagreement among judges as to which compensation is fair. In that case, we let judges rule on such disputes, while a machine tracks a certain measure of the relative differences of the granted compensations. In the second stage that measure, which expresses the degree of legal uncertainty, has dropped below a predefined threshold. From then on legal decisions on the quantity of the ex aequo et bono compensation for the considered type of dispute may be replaced by the average of previous compensations. The main consequence is that this type of dispute is, from this stage on, free of legal uncertainty. (shrink)

International law holds that a firm is dumping if its foreign price is either below its domestic price or below its marginal cost. Domestic firms often claim that a low-cost foreign firm is engaged in a long run strategy to destroy the domestic industry and harm domestic consumers. Dumping is a permanent feature of marketing strategies of numerous companies, and anti-dumping complaints are increasingly resorted to as a defensive instrument to stop the challengers. This article offers a synthesis of ethical (...) and legal issues involved and relates them to marketing concerns in international operations. What is the current state of dumping legislation? What concern over personal ethics should a manager have? Using teleological and deontological philosophies of ethics the argument is made that the marketing manager who set very low prices for an international market is not behaving unethically. (shrink)

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities urges and requires changes to how signatories discharge their duties to people with intellectual disabilities, in the direction of their greater recognition as legal persons with expanded decision-making rights. Australian jurisdictions are currently undertaking inquiries and pilot projects that explore how these imperatives should be implemented. One of the important changes advocated is to move from guardianship models to supported or assisted models of decision-making. A driving force behind (...) these developments is a strong allegiance to the social model of disability, in the formulation of the Convention, in inquiries and pilot projects, in implementation and in the related academic literature. Many of these instances suffer from confusing and misleading statements and conceptual misinterpretations of certain elements such as legal capacity, decision-making capacity, and support for decision-making. This paper analyses some of these confusions and their possible negative implications for supported decision-making instruments and those whose interests these instruments would serve, and advises a more incremental development of existing guardianship regimes. This provides a more realistic balance between neglecting the real limits of those with mental disabilities and thereby ignoring their identity and particularity, and continuing to bring them equally and fully into society. (shrink)

Robots are now associated with various aspects of our lives. These sophisticated machines have been increasingly used in different manufacturing industries and services sectors for decades. During this time, they have been a factor in causing significant harm to humans, prompting questions of liability. Industrial robots are presently regarded as products for liability purposes. In contrast, some commentators have proposed that robots be granted legal personality, with an overarching aim of exonerating the respective creators and users of these artefacts (...) from liability. This article is concerned mainly with industrial robots that exercise some degree of self-control as programmed, though the creation of fully autonomous robots is still a long way off. The proponents of the robot’s personality compare these machines generally with corporations, and sporadically with, inter alia, animals, and idols, in substantiating their arguments. This article discusses the attributes of legal personhood and the justifications for the separate personality of corporations and idols. It then demonstrates the reasons for refusal of an animal’s personality. It concludes that robots are ineligible to be persons, based on the requirements of personhood. (shrink)

What is law? Does it have a purpose? What is its relationship with justice? Do we have a moral duty to obey the law? These sorts of questions lie at the heart of jurisprudence. Moreover, every substantive or 'black letter' branch of the law raises questions about its own meaning and function. The law of contract cannot be properly understood without an appreciation of the concepts of rights and duties. The law of tort is directly related to several economic theories (...) of compensation. The criminal law is inextricably linked to philosophies of punishment? Understanding Jurisprudence explores these problems and provides an engaging introduction to the central issues of legal theory. The book navigates the reader through legal philosophy's fundamental concepts, concerns, and controversies. An experienced teacher of jurisprudence and distinguished writer in the field, Professor Wacks adopts an approach that is easy to follow and understand without avoiding the complexities and subtleties of the subject. Students of law, politics, philosophy, and other social sciences will find this an ideal guide to the essential themes of contemporary jurisprudence. Online Resource Centre A free online resource accompanies the book and provides the following resources: Analysis of current controversies of a jurisprudential nature such as current legal and moral controversies and political debates An additional chapter providing guidance and advice on the study of jurisprudence An interactive glossary of key terms relating to legal theory Further reading, including links to full text journal articles Questions and answers Useful Web links to support learning. (shrink)

Digitalisation and emerging technologies affect our lives and are increasingly present in a growing number of fields. Ethical implications of the digitalisation process have therefore long been discussed by the scholars. The rapid development of artificial intelligence has taken the legal and ethical discussion to another level. There is no doubt that AI can have a positive impact on the society. The focus here, however, is on its more negative impact. This article will specifically consider how the law and (...) ethics in their interaction can be applied in a situation where a disabled person needs some kind of assistive technology to participate in the society as an equal member. This article intends to investigate whether the EU Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, as a milestone of ethics concerning technology, has the power to change the current practice of how social and economic rights are applied. The main focus of the article is the ethical requirements ‘Human agency and oversight’ and, more specifically, fundamental rights. (shrink)

BackgroundDepressive disorders are a common form of psychiatric illness and cause significant disability. Regulation authorities, the medical profession and the public require high safety standards for antidepressants to protect vulnerable psychiatric patients. Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic and a derivative of a hallucinogen. Its abuse is a major worldwide public health problem. Ketamine is a scheduled drug and its usage is restricted due to its abuse liability. Recent clinical trials have reported that ketamine use led to rapid antidepressant effects in (...) patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression. However, various flaws in study designs, and possible biased reporting of results, may have influenced those findings. Further analyses of ketamine use are needed to ensure patient safety.DiscussionThe use of ketamine in research and treatment of depressive disorders is controversial. Recently, mental health professionals raised ethical concerns about an ongoing ketamine trial in the UK. Also, a Canadian agency reviewed the existing evidence and did not recommend prescribing ketamine to treat depressive disorders. Findings obtained from tightly controlled research settings cannot be easily translated to clinical practice as substance abuse is commonly comorbid with depressive disorders. An effective antidepressant should reduce severity of depressive symptoms without liability problems. Although the US FDA has not approved the use of ketamine to treat depressive disorders, some psychiatrists offer off-label repeat prescription of ketamine. Prescribing ketamine for treating depressive disorders requires substantial empirical evidence. Clinicians should also consider research findings on ketamine abuse. Depressive disorders can be chronic conditions and the current evidence does not rule out the risk of substance abuse after repeat prescription of ketamine. Off-label ketamine use in treating depressive disorders may breach ethical and moral standards, especially in countries seriously affected by ketamine abuse. This article presents two real-world clinical vignettes which highlight ethical principles and theories, including autonomy, nonmaleficience, fidelity and consequentialism, as related to off-label ketamine use.ConclusionWe urge clinicians to minimise the risk of harming patients by considering the empirical evidence on ketamine properties and attempting all standard antidepressant therapies before considering the off-label use of ketamine. (shrink)

Automated legal reasoning and its application in smart contracts and automated decisions are increasingly attracting interest. In this context, ethical and legal concerns make it necessary for automated reasoners to justify in human-understandable terms the advice given. Logic Programming, specially Answer Set Programming, has a rich semantics and has been used to very concisely express complex knowledge. However, modelling discretionality to act and other vague concepts such as ambiguity cannot be expressed in top-down execution models based on (...) Prolog, and in bottom-up execution models based on ASP the justifications are incomplete and/or not scalable. We propose to use s(CASP), a top-down execution model for predicate ASP, to model vague concepts following a set of patterns. We have implemented a framework, called s(LAW), to model, reason, and justify the applicable legislation and validate it by translating (and benchmarking) a representative use case, the criteria for the admission of students in the “Comunidad de Madrid”. (shrink)

A question, long discussed by legal scholars, has recently provoked a considerable amount of philosophical attention: ‘Is it ever appropriate to base a legal verdict on statistical evidence alone?’ Many philosophers who have considered this question reject legal reliance on bare statistics, even when the odds of error are extremely low. This paper develops a puzzle for the dominant theories concerning why we should eschew bare statistics. Namely, there seem to be compelling scenarios in which there are (...) multiple sources of incriminating statistical evidence. As we conjoin together different types of statistical evidence, it becomes increasingly incredible to suppose that a positive verdict would be impermissible. I suggest that none of the dominant views in the literature can easily accommodate such cases, and close by offering a diagnosis of my own. (shrink)

Background Only a few studies have been conducted to assess physicians’ knowledge of legal standards. Nevertheless, prior research has demonstrated a dearth of medical law knowledge. Our study explored physicians’ awareness of legal provisions concerning informed consent and confidentiality, which are essential components of the physician-patient relationship of trust. -/- Methods A cross-sectional study assessed attending physicians’ legal knowledge of informed consent and confidentiality regulations. The study was conducted in nine hospitals in Dolj County, Romania. Physicians were (...) given a questionnaire with ten scenarios and instructed to select the response that best reflected their practice. We assessed the responses of physicians who claimed their practice to be entirely legal. Their legal knowledge was evaluated by comparing their answers to applicable laws. We also calculated a score for the physicians who admitted to committing a legal breach. -/- Results Of the 305 respondents, 275 declared they never committed any law violation. However, their median correct answer score was 5.35 ± 1.66 out of 10. The specialty was the strongest predictor of legal knowledge, with emergency physicians rating the lowest and non-surgical physicians scoring the highest. Physicians who worked in both private and public sectors were better knowledgeable about legal issues than those who worked exclusively in the public sector. Results indicate that physicians are aware of the patient’s right to informed consent but lack comprehensive understanding. While most physicians correctly answered simple questions, only a tiny minority identified the correct solution when confronted with ethical dilemmas. The physicians who acknowledged breaching the law, on the other hand, had a slightly higher knowledge score at 5.45 ± 2.18. -/- Conclusion Legal compliance remains relatively low due to insufficient legal awareness. Physicians display limited awareness of legal requirements governing patient autonomy, confidentiality, and access to health data. Law should be taught in all medical schools, including undergraduate programs, to increase physicians’ legal knowledge and compliance. (shrink)

Chapter one argues for the important contribution that a natural law based framework can make towards an analysis and assessment of key controversies surrounding the practices of suicide, assisted suicide, and voluntary euthanasia. The second chapter considers a number of historical contributions to the debate. The third chapter takes up the modern context of ideas that have increasingly come to the fore in shaping the 'push' for reform. Particular areas focused upon include the value of human life, the value of (...) personal autonomy, and the rejection of double effect reasoning. Chapter four engages in the task of pointing out structural weakness in utilitarianism and deontology. The thesis argues that major systemic weaknesses in both approaches can be overcome by a teleology of basic human goods. John Finnis' work becomes the underpinning of subsequent applied natural law analysis. Chapter five proceeds to argue for the defence of the intrinsic good of human life from direct attack. The thesis holds out for the proposition "that it is always a serious moral wrong to intentionally kill a human person, whether self or another, regardless of a further appeal to consequences or motive." In support of this, it defends the validity of double effect reasoning as an indispensable part of applied moral decision making. Chapter six critically assesses the arguments of anti-perfectionists that it is not the business of the state to enforce deep or substantive conceptions of the 'good life.' The chapter moves on to argue that the natural law conception of the person in society, centred on the common good, provides a solid framework for assessing both the justification for, as well as the limits on, the role of the state to use its power to legally impose certain moral standards. Chapter seven addresses the concrete relationship between natural law and legal policy by exploring the issue of assisted suicide in the constitutional context of the United States.















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This study aims to identify artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that are applied in climate-smart agricultural practices and address ethical concerns of deploying those technologies from legal perspectives. As climate-smart agricultural AI, the study considers those AI-based technologies that are used for precision agriculture, monitoring peat lands, deforestation tracking, and improved forest management. The study utilized a systematic literature review approach to identify and analyze AI technologies employed in climate-smart agriculture and associated ethical and legal concerns. The (...) study findings indicate several ethical concerns for deploying AI in climate-smart agricultural practices pertaining to data inaccuracy, other technical errors based on wrong recommendations or wrongful acts, data ownership and intellectual property issues, and economic issues resulting in digital division and privacy and security related issues. In this study, the ethical concerns were further examined based on criminal law, tort law, privacy and data protection law, and intellectual property law. In this regard, the study finds that the current tort law pattern is more suitable than the criminal law pattern to address some major ethical concerns, such as data inaccuracy and other technical errors based on wrong recommendations or wrongful acts. Finally, the study recommends that at the global level, all countries need to fill up the current gap of international law on climate-smart agriculture through agreeing on a standard set of legal provisions and enhancing collaboration in innovation and deployment of climate-smart agricultural AI. It further recommends that at the local level, countries need to adopt suitable regulations addressing multi-stakeholders’ interests associated with the deployment of climate-smart agricultural AIs. (shrink)

This paper concerns what if any obligations a “society of equals” has to criminal offenders after legal punishment ends. In the United States, when people leave prisons, they are confronted with a wide range of federal, state, and local laws that burden their ability to secure welfare benefits, public housing, employment opportunities, and student loans. Since the 1980s, these legal consequences of criminal convictions have steadily increased in their number, severity, and scope. The central question I want (...) to ask is whether the infliction of these burdensome legal consequences for those who have already been punished by the state is consistent with the ideal of equality. I argue that these collateral legal consequences violate relational egalitarian principles of justice and are thus objectionable. I conclude by examining possible objections to my argument. (shrink)