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Legal Precedent (legal + precedent)
Selected Abstracts"A More Perfect Union": Ableman v. Booth and the Culmination of Federal SovereigntyJOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY, Issue 2 2003Michael J. C. Taylor The discourse over federal versus state jurisdiction was ingrained into American politics at the nation's inception. It has been the premise of our most historically significant rivalries,between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster and Robert Hayne. Though this debate remains a contentious topic in contemporary political discourse, the U.S. Supreme Court settled the legal controversy on the eve of America's bloodiest conflagration. Unanimously, the Court ruled that the federal union was of greater importance than the authority of the individual states. The 1859 Ableman v. Booth1 decision was wrought from moral controversy, legal precedent, and political necessity, coupled with the full force of law, and has endured as a compelling pronouncement on the need for continuity and stability in uncertain times. [source] Beyond Bland: a critique of the BMA guidance on withholding and withdrawing medical treatmentLEGAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2000John Keownz MA (Cantab) D Phil (Oxon) In Bland1 the House of Lords held it lawful to withdraw tube-feeding from a patient in a ,persistent vegetative state' (pvs), even with intent to kill him. The British Medical Association (BMA) recently published guidance on the withholding and withdrawal of ,medical treatment', so defined as to include food and water delivered by tube. The guidance endorses the withholding/withdrawal of tube-delivered food and water not only from patients in pvs but also from other non-terminally ill patients, such as those with severe dementia or serious stroke. The underlying justification appears (as in Bland) to be that such lives lack worth. This article offers three major criticisms of the guidance. First, its argument that tube-feeding is medical treatment rather than basic care is weak. Secondly, its reasons for not treating or tube-feeding undermine the BMA's longstanding opposition to active euthanasia and active assisted suicide. Thirdly, it relies heavily on legal precedent at the expense of ethical reasoning. [source] Mechanism of Motivated Reasoning?AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2007Analogical Perception in Discrimination Disputes This article examines the boundaries of motivated reasoning in legal decision making. We propose a model of attitudinal influence involving analogical perception. Attitudes influence judgments by affecting the perceived similarity between a target case and cases cited as precedent. Bias should be most apparent in judging similarity when cases are moderately similar on objective dimensions. We conducted two experiments: the first with undergraduates, the second with undergraduates and law students. Participants in each experiment read a mock newspaper article that described a "target case" involving unlawful discrimination. Embedded in the article was a description of a "source case" cited as legal precedent. Participants in both studies were more likely to find source cases with outcomes that supported their policy views in the target dispute as analogous to that litigation. Commensurate with our theory, there was evidence in both experiments that motivated perceptions were most apparent where cases were moderately similar on objective dimensions. Although there were differences in the way lay and law student participants viewed cases, legal training did not appear to attenuate motivated perceptions. [source] The Supreme Court versus Peyote: Consciousness Alteration, Cultural Psychiatry and the Dilemma of Contemporary SubculturesANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Issue 2 2001Joseph D. CalabreseArticle first published online: 8 JAN 200 The Native American Church is examined as an illustrative example in the political anthropology of consciousness. Specific attention is paid to the Supreme Court's ignoring of accepted research on this tradition and its sacrament, Peyote, in the case of Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith. An anthropological reaction to the Smith decision is constructed, focusing on ethnographic findings regarding Peyote that contradict the Supreme Court's ethnocentric assumptions. This paper argues that Peyote's Schedule I status is not supported by the ethnographic findings. Peyote, as used in the Native American Church, is recognized as safe and therapeutic. It is also argued that the Supreme Court's rationale for denying Peyotist religious freedom is not supported by the ethnographic findings nor by legal precedent. Not only is the Native American's right to use Peyote a matter of freedom of religion, it also involves other rights such as the right to raise one's children in one's own culture and the right to be treated using a culturally relevant therapeutic modality. [source] The International Criminal Court: Reforming the Politics of International JusticeGOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 1 2003Spyros Economides The International Criminal Court (ICC) came into effect on 1 July 2002. This article gives an account of the historical background to the ICC and an overview of the Court's Statute, remit and powers. It is argued that the ICC is a highly politicized legal institution which will only be effective through inter-state cooperation. Despite its lengthy historical antecedents and legal precedents, prudence suggests that , due to the nature of international politics , the establishment of the ICC should be viewed as the beginning of a cumulative process of reforming the politics of international justice rather than the end of a process of transformation in international law. [source] Telepsychiatry with rural American Indians: issues in civil commitmentsBEHAVIORAL SCIENCES & THE LAW, Issue 3 2008Jay H. Shore M.D., M.P.H. The use of live interactive videoconferencing to provide psychiatric care, telepsychiatry, has particular relevance for improving mental health treatment to rural American Indian reservations. There is little literature on civil commitments in telepsychiatry and none specifically addressing this topic among American Indians. This article reviews telepsychiatry in the mental health care of American Indians, civil commitments and telepsychiatry in general, and the current state of civil commitments in American Indian communities. We conclude by considering commitment through telepsychiatry in rural reservations and offering guidelines to assist practitioners in navigating this challenging landscape. Civil commitments of American Indian patients residing in rural reservations can be successfully accomplished through videoconferencing by thoughtful and informed clinicians. However, much more work is needed in this area, including research into the cultural attitudes and perspectives towards commitments and further inquiry regarding potential legal precedents, as well as case reports and examples of this work. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | ||||||||||