Mental Health and the Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 373-402
Author(s):  
Deborah Agus ◽  
Kristin E. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Legal Structure ◽  
The Law ◽  
Constitutional System ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Health Service System

The law lays the framework for all government systems, and public health is no exception. Understanding the legal framework of the United States is essential to designing a functional and legitimate behavioral health service system. The unique structure of US law, which is a constitutional system balanced by statutes and which is federalist in principle, creates both opportunities and challenges to a public health system that similarly strives to balance individual needs and rights with the health and needs of the community. The chapter explains how law is developed and delves into current legal issues that are understood through the lens of a permanent legal structure as interpreted over time. The chapter begins with an explanation of the legal system and legal methods and then explores issues related to individual rights and concerns such as dangerousness, right to treatment, coercive treatment, and the individual rights of choice. When finished, the reader will have a comprehensive outlook providing a tool to analyze issues that are current and dynamic.

An analysis of stagnation in multilateral law-making – and why the law of the sea has transcended the stagnation trend

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Current Trend ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Making ◽  
Multilateral Treaties

Abstract The article explores the current stagnation in multilateral law-making based on an analysis of recent treaty attempts across various subfields of international law. It further examines why the law of the sea has continued to evolve despite this trend. The article demonstrates that states still regularly seek multilateral treaties to address new challenges. While there is some evidence of general treaty saturation, it is the current inability of traditional great powers to negotiate new binding norms which is the most constraining factor on multilateral law-making. This in turn is related to deeper geopolitical shifts by which traditional great powers, notably the United States and its allies, have seen their relative influence decline. Until the current great power competition ends or settles into a new mode of international co-operation, new multilateral treaties with actual regulatory effect will rarely emerge. The law of the sea has avoided the current trend of stagnation for primarily three reasons (i) a global commitment to the basic tenets of the law of the sea; (ii) a legal framework that affords rights and obligations somewhat evenly disbursed, allowing less powerful states to use their collective leverage to advance multilateral negotiations, despite intermittent great power opposition; and (iii) the avoidance of entrenched multilateral forums where decisions are reached by consensus only.

Pandemics and Emergency Powers in Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 133-146
Author(s):  
Victor V. Ramraj ◽  
Arun K. Thiruvengadam
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Social Activities ◽  
Legal Structure ◽  
Emergency Powers ◽  
Political Unrest ◽  
Roman Model ◽  
Governmental Response

This chapter looks at emergency powers under Covid-19 in Asia. The ancient Roman model of dictatorship suggests that any legal framework for responding to an emergency has two components: dealing effectively with the threat and preventing abuse. How can these goals best be secured in a pandemic? Within the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic, it become readily apparent that it posed two kinds of threat. First, it posed a mortal threat to individual and public health arising from a deadly virus that could be transmitted relatively easily through everyday social activities. Second, the efforts of governments to contain its spread inevitably led to a secondary danger as social and economic life was shuttered—the danger of social and political unrest. The chapter considers two dimensions of the governmental response: the formal legal structure under which that response operates and the dynamics of expertise, trust, and responsiveness to feedback that it potentially fosters—or inhibits. It argues that the goal of returning to normal is best served when these two dimensions—the legal framework and the expertise-feedback dynamic—are aligned to enable the society to respond effectively and fairly.

8 Close-Out Netting and Safe Harbours

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Credit Risk ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Early Termination ◽  
Insolvency Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Safe Harbours ◽  
Multiple Jurisdictions

This chapter studies the early termination of collateral transactions. It is in this context that the transactions must prove their worth, i.e. must show they indeed reduce or limit the credit risk the collateral taker runs on the collateral provider. To achieve this result, contractual techniques have been developed that have subsequently been sanctioned and protected by the law. The chapter looks at the legal framework regulating those contractual techniques. However, the early termination of collateral transactions and the enforcement by the collateral taker of its rights in the assets provided as collateral involve specific legal issues. The majority of collateral transactions provide for 'close-out netting' as a way of enforcement; close-out netting thus replaces traditional enforcement of security interests, such as public auction. In addition, the termination of collateral transactions, and close-out netting in particular, in multiple jurisdictions is protected by 'safe harbours', i.e. shielded from insolvency law rules that would otherwise be applicable.

scholarly journals Beyond quarantine: a history of leprosy in Puerto Rico, 1898-1930s

2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (suppl 1) ◽  
pp. 225-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie H. Levison
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

From biblical times to the modern period, leprosy has been a disease associated with stigma. This mark of disgrace, physically present in the sufferers' sores and disfigured limbs, and embodied in the identity of a 'leper', has cast leprosy into the shadows of society. This paper draws on primary sources, written in Spanish, to reconstruct the social history of leprosy in Puerto Rico when the United States annexed this island in 1898. The public health policies that developed over the period of 1898 to the 1930s were unique to Puerto Rico because of the interplay between political events, scientific developments and popular concerns. Puerto Rico was influenced by the United States' priorities for public health, and the leprosy control policies that developed were superimposed on vestiges of the colonial Spanish public health system. During the United States' initial occupation, extreme segregation sacrificed the individual rights and liberties of these patients for the benefit of society. The lives of these leprosy sufferers were irrevocably changed as a result.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study of the Law of Palliative Care and End-of-Life Treatment

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danuta Mendelson ◽  
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Life Issues ◽  
The Law ◽  
End Of Life Issues ◽  
End Of Life Treatment

Since the Supreme Court of New Jersey decided the Quinlan case a quarter of a century ago, three American Supreme Court decisions and a host of state appellate decisions have addressed end-of-life issues. These decisions, as well as legislation addressing the same issues, have prompted a torrent of law journal articles analyzing every aspect of end-of-life law. In recent years, moreover, a number of law review articles, many published in this journal, have also specifically addressed legal issues raised by palliative care. Much less is known in the United States, however, as to how other countries address these issues. Reflection on the experience and analysis of other nations may give Americans a better understanding of their own experience, as well as suggest improvements to their present way of dealing with the difficult problems in this area.This article offers a conceptual and comparative analysis of major legal issues relating to end-of-life treatment and to the treatment of pain in a number of countries. In particular, it focuses on the law of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan.

Private Lives, State Intervention: Cases of Runaway Marriage in Rural North India

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prem Chowdhry
Keyword(s):  
Common Ancestor ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
North India ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
Legal Restrictions ◽  
The Law ◽  
Patrilineal Descent ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Caste Groups

The introduction of modern concepts like adulthood and sanctity given to individual rights has legally turned the individual settlement of marriage between two consenting adults to be legitimate. Under the Hindu Marriage Act 1955, except for certain incest taboos, the legal restrictions on marriage of two adult Hindus are almost non-existent. Briefly speaking, this means that under the law both sagotra (same gotra) and inter-caste marriages are permitted. Yet, the customary rules regulating marriages in most parts of north India are based upon caste endogamy, village and clan exogamy. While keeping within caste, they adopt the gotra or got, as is known in rural north India, rule of exogamy (gotra are an exogamous patrilineal clan whose members are thought to share patrilineal descent from a common ancestor). For marriage certain prohibited degrees of kinship have to be avoided. As a rule three or four got exogamy is followed by most caste groups upper or lower. Any break in this, though legally allowed, is not acceptable.

Rights and Responsibilities Online: A Paradox for Our Times

First Monday ◽  
2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan F. Fanton
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Social Network Sites ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Game Players ◽  
The Individual

The Internet is hailed as a democratic force freeing people from inherited orthodoxy and hierarchy. Yet some observers and visitors of virtual worlds decry the absence of the individual rights we have come to expect in a democratic society. This paradox of the Internet’s democratic promise and lack of democratic protections raises vexing legal issues. What are the rights and responsibilities of owners and users of digital media, profilers on social network sites, game players and participants in virtual worlds of all types? These issues must be addressed if the power of community is to be realized in a just and sustainable way.

scholarly journals Sources of Success in California's Individual Marketplace under the Affordable Care Act

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 679-706
Author(s):  
Petra W. Rasmussen ◽  
Gerald F. Kominski
Keyword(s):  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Partners ◽  
Early Adoption ◽  
Individual Market ◽  
The Affordable Care Act ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Trump Administration

Abstract When passed in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) became the greatest piece of health care reform in the United States since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. In the 9 years since its passage, the law has ushered in a drastic decrease in the number of uninsured Americans and has encouraged delivery system innovation. However, the ACA has not been uniformly embraced, and states differ in their implementation of the law and in their individual health insurance marketplace's successfulness. Furthermore, under the Trump administration the law's future and the stability of the individual market have been uncertain. Throughout, however, California has been a leader. Today, the state's marketplace, known as Covered California, offers comprehensive, standardized health plans to over 1.3 million consumers. California's success with the ACA is largely attributable to its historical receptiveness to health reform; its early adoption of the law; its decision to have Covered California operate as an active purchaser, help shape the plans sold through the marketplace, and design a consumer-friendly enrollment experience; its engagement with stakeholders and community partners to encourage enrollment; and Covered California's commitment to continually innovate, improve, and anticipate the needs of the individual market as the law moves forward.

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