An inmate’s right to die: legal and ethical considerations in death row volunteering

There is a considerable body of literature about the death penalty across a variety of disciplines. However, a newer body of literature has emerged examining the phenomenon of elected executions, also known as death row volunteering. To date, 138 (nearly 11%) of the 1300 death row executions have come from volunteers. This issue has been particularly controversial due to a number of legal and ethical considerations that have been raised by the scholarly, legal, and public communities. Such issues include a capital defendant’s competency to volunteer; ethical and moral dilemmas for capital defense attorneys, the states, and medical and mental health professionals; whether death row volunteering equates to ‘state-assisted suicide’; and finally, how these considerations impact the public’s support for capital punishment. This paper reviews the existing literature pertaining to death row volunteering through the lenses of these various considerations. Recommendations for future research in this area are also offered.     

The Creative Commons licences through moral rights provisions in French law

Since 2002, Creative Commons has been continuously evolving in order to create a licensing scheme that not only fulfils the needs of the author but also stays compatible with already existing national copyright laws. The extent of the respect of moral rights provisions has always been highlighted during the licences’ evolution. This Article first examines whether moral rights are expressly mentioned in the licences and if so, what their treatment is. Each element of the moral rights in the French system will be considered in order to verify their compatibility with the Creative Commons licences. In this context, it will be also asserted whether some existing clauses in the licence contradict with the moral rights of authors. The Article will conclude that although a more flexible interpretation of moral rights provisions is needed when dealing with open content licences, it is essential that Creative Commons addresses the aspects of the licences that are identified as problematic in relation to moral rights. Finally, it will be demonstrated that regardless of the legal status of the licences, the authors' responsibility towards their rights is what will ultimately be the safeguard of their creations' path.     

On a clear day you can see forever: Integrating values and skills in sex offender treatment

Abstract

The topic of sex offender rehabilitation frequently evokes fierce reactions, ranging from strident demands for harsher sentences contrasted with calls for more imaginative and compassionate sentencing options. There seems to be a polarization of positions centred on the question of offenders’ moral standing: are they moral strangers or fellow travellers? This fundamental disagreement about offenders’ moral status is at the core of a number of independent, although related current practice and research issues confronting the field, namely: (1) risk management versus strength-based treatment approaches; (2) the utility of utilizing individually tailored versus manual-based programmes for offenders; (3) focusing on the technical aspects or therapy as opposed to relationship and therapist factors (what has been called process issues); and (4) the conflict between protecting the community versus promoting the interests of offenders. In this paper I suggest that an approach to sex offender treatment based on a combination of human rights theory (an ethical resource) and strengths-based approaches can help us navigate our way through the above dilemmas in a way that addressees both the needs of offenders and those of the community.     

Life after death: preservation of the immortal seed

In today's brave new world, women who suffer the loss of their husband or lover can call upon medical science to create a souvenir baby. The rights of the decedent over his genetic material and the rights of the child who is created therefrom are the subject of an evolving legal process. This Essay examines legal, moral and ethical issues which arise from post-mortem artificial insemination. It discusses the attendant conflicts of procreative rights, finality of probate, psychological issues, international law, and recent cases. Ultimately, comprehensive legislation must be enacted to address these issues.     

Establishing a compulsory drug treatment prison: Therapeutic policy, principles, and practices in addressing offender rights and rehabilitation

A Compulsory Drug Treatment Correctional Center (CDTCC) was established in Australia in 2006 for repeat drug-related male offenders. Compulsory treatment law is inconsistent with a therapeutic jurisprudence approach. Despite the compulsory law, a normative offender rehabilitation framework has been established based on offender moral rights. Within moral rights, the offender rehabilitation framework addresses the core values of freedom (supporting autonomous decision-making) and well-being (supporting support physical, social, and psychological needs). Moral rights are underpinned by a theory or principle which, in this instance, is a humane approach to offender rehabilitation. While a law that permits offenders to choose drug treatment and rehabilitation is preferable, the article discusses the establishment of a prison based on therapeutic policy, principles, and practices that respond to participants as both rights-violators and rights-holders. The opportunity for accelerated community access and a therapeutic alliance with staff has resulted in offenders actively seeking to be ordered into compulsory drug treatment and rehabilitation.     

Sex offender risk assessment: Consideration of human rights in community protection legislation

Objectives. Risk assessments provided to judicial decision makers as a part of the current generation of legislation for protecting the public from sexual offenders can have a profound impact on the rights of individual offenders. This article will identify some of the human rights issues inherent in using the current assessment procedures to formulate and communicate risk as a forensic expert in cases involving civil commitment, preventive detention, extended supervision, or special conditions of parole. Method. Based on the current professional literature and applied experience in legal proceedings under community protection laws in the United States and New Zealand, potential threats to the rights of offenders are identified. Central to these considerations are issues of the accuracy of current risk assessment measures, communicating the findings of risk assessment appropriately to the court, and the availability of competent forensic mental health professionals in carrying out these functions. The role of the forensic expert is discussed in light of the competing demands of protecting individual human rights and community protection. Conclusion. Actuarial risk assessment represents the best practice for informing judicial decision makers in cases involving sex offenders, yet these measures currently demonstrate substantial limitations in predictive accuracy when applied to individual offenders. These limitations must be clearly articulated when reporting risk assessment findings. Sufficient risk assessment expertise should be available to provide a balanced application of community protection laws.     

Lamenting the list: a partial test of Sherman’s defiance theory as applied to female sex offenders

Through the community notification and sex offender registry laws that have been passed, the USA has created a strict legal environment that requires sex offenders to remain in compliance with the registry requirements placed on them by the state once they are released back into their communities. A variety of unintended consequences, such as unemployment and housing issues, have resulted from these laws and have the potential to impact the reentry efforts of released sex offenders. Using Sherman’s defiance theory as a theoretical lens, the current study examines the experiences of registered female sex offenders living in Florida. One hundred and six registered female sex offenders were surveyed to examine their experiences while on the registry, and whether those events influence feelings of defiance toward the registry and criminal justice systems. Results suggest that these offenders indeed experience unintended consequences due to their registration status, which in turn shows support for the four canonical elements of Sherman’s theory by inferring that these women feel unjustly punished and stigmatized. Research findings, policy implications, and limitations are discussed.     

一种双重面向的权利——论福利权的法律性质

尽管,福利权为美国学者所采取的主要用语,但在其他不采用该用语的国家,福利权的类似争论也在进行.其中,主要涉及到福利权是消极权利还是积极权利、福利权是道德权利抑或法律权利以及其是否需要宪法规定.而事实上,福利权可能更是一种带有混合性质的权利,在不同的面向上需要不同的保障方式.     

The Trouble with Moral Rights

It is usually argued that moral rights are severely handicapped by their inconsistent entrenchment in common law and civilian legal systems. This article argues that the main trouble with moral rights protection is that the justifications for the existence of these rights are riddled with internal inconsistencies generated by the vagaries of copyright exploitation. Harmonising moral rights protection or using moral rights justifications cumulatively may not resolve the theoretical inconsistencies. Copyright protection must therefore be seriously overhauled if moral rights are to be widely perceived as vehicles for protecting authors' rights.     

International Law,Institutional Moral Reasoning,and Secession

This paper argues for the superiority of international law’s existing ban on unilateral secession over its reform to include either a primary or remedial right to secession. I begin by defending the claim that secession is an inherently institutional concept, and that therefore we ought to employ institutional moral reasoning to defend or criticize specific proposals regarding a right to secede. I then respond to the objection that at present we lack the empirical evidence necessary to sustain any specific conclusion regarding an international legal right to secession. Specifically, I argue that we ought to adopt a precautionary approach, and that such an approach justifies giving no weight to promoting political self-determination per se when considering whether to reform international law governing secession. I conclude with several reasons to think that even a remedial right to unilateral secession will detract from, not enhance, the international legal order’s ability to promote peace and human rights.     

Copyright in custom code: Who owns commissioned software?

Legal context: When software is commissioned, it is important that the partiesagree what rights are being acquired and what rights retained.Copyright is the most important such right, but moral rightsand database rights must also be considered. When there is noexplicit agreement on these rights, the courts are often facedwith claims that there is an implied term that they should vestin the client (or be waived in the case of moral rights). Thisarticle examines the issues that arise in such cases. Key points: The article outlines the development of case law dealing withimplied terms as to ownership of commissioned works. It explainshow the courts have applied older principles to the new areaof commissioned software, and how those principles have evolvedto make it more difficult for a client to establish an impliedterm in their favour. The article examines in particular issuesarising from code reuse, the disclosure of source code, andthe application of database rights and moral rights to software.It also considers case law where clients have claimed to bejoint authors of software by virtue of their involvement inits design and testing. Practical significance: There are an increasing number of cases where software is commissionedon an informal basis and disputes later arise as to the ownershipof that software. This article provides a framework for consideringsuch disputes.     

Legal Rights and the Limits of Conceptual Analysis: A Case Study

Legal philosophers divide over whether it is possible to analyze legal concepts without engaging in normative argument. The influential analysis of legal rights advanced by Jules Coleman and Jody Kraus some years ago serves as a useful case study to consider this issue because even some legal philosophers who are generally skeptical of the neutrality claims of conceptual analysts have concluded that Coleman and Kraus's analysis manages to maintain such neutrality. But that analysis does depend in subtle but important ways on normative claims. Their argument assumes not only a positivist concept of law, but also that it counts in favor of an analysis of legal rights that it increases the number of options available to legal decisionmakers. Thus, whether Coleman and Kraus's analysis is right in the end depends on whether those normative assumptions are justified. If even their analysis, which makes the thinnest of conceptual claims, depends on normative premises, that fact serves as strong evidence of the difficulty of analyzing legal concepts while remaining agnostic on moral and political questions.     

Constructing Hysteria: Legal Signals as Producers of Siting Conflicts Over Sexually Violent Predator Placements

Sexually violent predator (SVP) statutes define some sex offenders as dangerous enough to be segregated from society, but then require their release into local communities. This article examines how decision makers and community members interpret and respond to this inherent contradiction during disputes over SVP placements. The article departs from traditional moral panic explanations of reactions to sex offenders by linking literature on local siting conflicts to insights from legal mobilization studies in order to understand the origins and features of community opposition to sex offenders. Data from three case studies of SVP placements in California suggest that interpretations of what I call legal signals, or implicit messages embedded in state laws, produced these conflicts. The findings shed new light on the role of law in siting conflicts and collective action by explaining how state laws facilitate communities’ exclusion from siting decisions, encourage local opposition, and disempower already marginalized communities.     

论植物人的法律人格及权利行使和保护

Although human vegetables lose their capacities of will and do not have the intrinsic attribute of civil subjects, they still have legal personalities and the status of civil subjects. The law has not provided for defects of their legal personalities, and thus civil law shall include human vegetables as objects of guardianship. The system of adult guardianship shall be constructed to supplement and correct the legal personalities of human vegetables. When human vegetables enter into a permanent vegetative state or state of brain death, law may declare the termination of legal personalities of the human vegetable. Due to the unique life state and capacity of act of human vegetables, the exercise of their civil rights faces a series of legal difficulties and challenges, mainly involving important issues such as the right of treatment for life rescue, marital right and reproductive right. The civil law shall ensure that the civil right of human vegetables can be fully enjoyed and effectively protected. Zhang Li, associate professor in civil and business law at Fujian Normal University, and also an invited researcher on civil law, international economic law and international private law, co-operated with Law School of Renmin University of China. Till now, she’s already released 23 theses in law journals and a monograph of the Survey of International Private Law. In addition, she was a member in doing studies (2006) on the legislation of Chinese tort law and presides over the researching (2007) of the legal personality and rights of disabled persons.     

The pregnant woman and the good Samaritan: can a woman have a duty to undergo a caesarean section?

Although a pregnant woman can now refuse any medical treatment needed by the fetus, the Court of Appeal has acknowledged that ethical dilemmas remain, adverting to the inappropriateness of legal compulsion of presumed moral duties in this context. This leaves the impression of an uncomfortable split between the ethics and the law. The notion of a pregnant woman refusing medical treatment needed by the fetus is troubling and it helps little simply to assert that she has a legal right to do so. At the same time, the idea that a pregnant woman fails in her moral duty unless she accepts any recommended treatment or surgery--however great the burden--is also not without difficulty. This article seeks to find a way between these two somewhat polarized positions by arguing that, instead of being a question primarily about whether legally to enforce moral obligations, the 'maternal-fetal conflict' begins with previously unrecognized difficulties in determining when a woman's prima facie moral rights invoked in the treatment context should 'give way' to the interests of the fetus. This difficulty is mirrored within the law. Thus, how can we tell when a pregnant woman has the moral or legal duty to submit to a caesarean section? Seen in this way, the conflict is a problem which lies at the interface between moral and legal rights and duties, showing that there are important conceptual links between the ethics and the law. Against this background, this article explores the limits of a pregnant woman's right to bodily integrity by focusing upon the idea of her moral duty to aid the fetus through her body. Here we find difficulties in determining the existence and extent of this somewhat extraordinary duty. Such a duty is contrasted with both negative and positive duties toward others in the course of 'general conduct.' Attention to the social context of pregnancy and the refusal of treatment within this is also instructive. Overall, the purpose is to foster understanding and acceptance of the current legal position.     

未成年子女利益之保护:意大利法的经验与借鉴

意大利是深受罗马法家父权传统影响的国家,未成年子女一直处于弱势的法律地位。经过理论界若干年的讨论与酝酿,1975年意大利修订了民法典中关于家庭法的部分。非婚生子女与婚生子女的法律地位实现了有限平等化。承认父母子女的利益是各自独立的,而且在存在利益冲突的情况下,诸多的司法判决都认可子女的意愿优先。监护权的行使,受到公权力的监督,无论是剥夺父母的监护权,还是临时性的收养,在监护障碍消除之后,往往还是鼓励孩子回归其原来的家庭。在保护未成年子女利益上,司法积极介入家事特别是父母与子女之间的关系,这点对深受传统思想影响的中国家庭尤其具有借鉴意义。     

Understanding Acts of Consent: Using Speech Act Theory to Help Resolve Moral Dilemmas and Legal Disputes

Understanding what it means toconsent is of considerable importance sincesignificant moral issues depend on how this actis defined. For instance, determining whetherconsent has occurred is the deciding factor insexual assault cases; its proper occurrence isa necessary condition for federally fundedhuman subject research. Even though mosttheorists recognize the legal and moralimportance of consent, there is still littleagreement concerning how consent should bedefined, or whether different domains involvingconsent demand context-specific definitions.Understanding what it means to consent isfurther complicated by the fact that currentlegal conceptions are not necessarily groundedin argument; they typically depend on appealsto authority and precedent. The purpose ofthis paper is to use speech act theory toprovide a theoretically grounded conception ofconsent; such a conception can aid in the justresolution of legal and moral disputes thathinge on whether an act of consent occurred.     

MEDICALLY ASSISTED HUMAN REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES (ART) AND HUMAN RIGHTS — THE EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

The present article examines how the progress of science, and in particular, medically assisted human reproductive technologies (ART) have provoked a revolution in the sphere of family relations, generating a series of ethical and legal conflicts. The article focuses on the European perspective, without ignoring the international sphere, given the globalization of the phenomenon. The emerging legal issues are analyzed through the filter of international human rights, not only an important aspect to take into consideration in the context of bioethics in general, but a “passage obligé” given that certain concepts find their explanation and coordinates in international human rights law. It is from this perspective that the relationship between ART and human rights is presented. The applicable international and European legal instruments and principles shall be mentioned, as well as a brief comparison of national legal frameworks in Europe. The emerging bioethical and legal issues are examined in correlation with the response of the European Court of Human Rights through its case law aimed at balancing conflicting rights when faced with issues pertaining to ART. Lastly, the article presents in more detail the particular legal issues under debate in France and Italy, two European countries with specific legislation in the field.     

死刑复核法律监督制度研究

检察机关对死刑复核实行法律监督,符合人大制度关于权力监督制约的原理,不影响最高人民法院应有的诉讼地位和独立性、权威性,体现了检察官客观性义务的要求,具有基本法律依据。开展死刑复核法律监督应遵循严格限制并减少死刑、切实保障人权、维护公共利益、公平、及时、突出重点等原则。检察机关在死刑复核中的诉讼地位不是公诉人,而是法律监督者。检察机关可以通过备案审查、受理申诉控告等启动监督程序。监督的主要方式包括提出案件意见、派员列席审委会会议、派员出席法庭或听审活动、抗诉、纠正违法以及立案侦查审判人员职务犯罪等。     

Negative governmentality through fundamental rights: The far side of the European Convention on Human Rights

This essay analyses those statements that mention legal norms in negative terms. Specifically, it analyses those statements that define a legal system by mentioning how legal protection does not work and where legal protection ends, and those statements that identify what rights‐holders do not have to with their legally protected free capacities. This essay argues that these statements address a systemic question. It calls such a dynamic as negative governmentality. The argument proceeds in four steps. It introduces the concept of negative governmentality by arguing that the idea of freedom requires both the positive affirmation of moral agency and the constraining of moral agency (Section 2 ). It then explores how rights constitute freedom by limiting rights or making exceptions to them (Section 3 ). Later, it analyses how rights‐based norms prevent abuse of rights by holders of rights (Section 4 ). Finally, it sees how rights‐based norms constrain the legal guarantor of rights, i.e., a state (Section 5 ). The essay concludes by mentioning the importance of negative governmentality (Section 6 ).