Forced organ donation: the presumed consent to organ donation laws of the various states and the United States Constitution

The issues presented in this Comment pertain to whether there are substantive limits imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment upon the state legislatures which would defeat the recent, tentative steps of many states to pass laws authorizing presumed consent to organ donation. The final and perhaps least effective presumed consent law creates a presumption of consent to organ donation. The potential organ donor makes the choice whether to donate or not during his lifetime. This form of the presumed consent law would probably have the least impact on increasing the number of available donor organs. It permitted the coroner to harvest the eyes and corneas of deceased individuals if the coroner was unaware of objections from either the decedent or the family of the decedent. Presumed consent statutes should be found unconstitutional because they infringe upon a family's property interest in a deceased relative's corpse. However, due to the family's property interest in a relative's deceased body, as set forth in the next section, the result is that presumed consent statutes are unconstitutional. In order to find the presumed consent law unconstitutional, the Court would have to find that either: (a) the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty component included the family's right to determine what happens to a relative's body after death, or (b) that the property component included a vested state law property interest in the dead body.     

Assisting altruism: evaluating legally binding consent in organ donation policy

The growing need for organ and tissue transplants has led a number of states to enforce a policy that views a donor's declared intent to be an organ donor as legally binding. This allows health officials to harvest organs without the permission of the next of kin. Legally binding consent is controversial because of concerns that it may anger family members, lead to negative publicity, and discourage potential donors. We use interviews and a pooled time-series data set of cadaveric donation rates in U.S. states to evaluate the effectiveness of this policy. Our research indicates that enforcement of legally binding consent has marginally increased cadaveric donations while not significantly affecting donor registration. We also find evidence that the effect of the policy might be greater if it were more fully implemented and coordinated with efforts to improve public acceptance and awareness.     

Energy transitions and trade law: lessons from the reform of fisheries subsidies

Fossil fuel subsidies, like subsidies to the fishing sector, lead to trade-distorting and ecologically harmful practices. The US$35 billion in subsidies provided by countries every year to the fishing sector leads to more and more boats being built, even as 90% of fish stocks are either fully exploited or overfished. An estimated US$444 billion in subsidies are provided annually for the production of fossil fuels by G20 countries, even as evidence emerges that oil, gas and coal reserves must remain unexploited to limit global warming increases to 2 °C. Of course, each country has its own development priorities, livelihood concerns and need for food and energy security. Agreeing upon subsidy reform is a complex undertaking that requires the assessment of social, political and historical considerations, as well as the involvement of international and transnational legal regimes that govern climate change, energy, fisheries and trade. This article reviews proposals for reform within the World Trade Organization and regional trade agreements, including the new disciplines on fisheries subsidies that were endorsed in the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Although the latter agreement is unlikely to enter into force, consensus is emerging on the need to prohibit subsidies that contribute to overfishing or that are linked to illegal, unreported or unregulated fishing. The article shows how these legal developments might inform attempts to limit fossil fuel production and consumption subsidies. It highlights the need for learning and open deliberation about subsidy reform by affected stakeholders, including representatives from international organizations and civil society. It also points to new arrangements that link compliance with subsidy rules to standards and benchmarks from fisheries regimes, and demonstrates how such inter-regime connections are legitimate in the context of the fragmentation of international law. While reform to fisheries subsidies is still preliminary and fraught, there are useful lessons for the equally important project of energy transitions.     

The importance of being dead: non-heart-beating organ donation

There is no definitive answer to the question of how long one must wait, after a person's heart stops beating, before concluding that the person meets the heart-lung criteria for death. This question has assumed new importance with attempts to remove transplantable organs from people declared dead using those criteria. An examination of the legal definition of death suggests that organs are indeed being procured from some of these people prior to their being legally dead. Moreover, the fact that the donors have consented to these procedures does not eliminate reason for concern regarding this state of affairs, since patient autonomy must at times be overridden in pursuance of important social goals.     

The evolution of consent search law

This study examines the legal issues associated with consent searches conducted by law enforcement officers to gather evidence for criminal prosecutions. Through a review of the available case law relating to consent searches the study examines the requirements of a valid consent to search, the issues associated with these requirements, and the relationship between these requirements and the Fourth Amendment. While the paper focuses on Supreme Court decisions, lower court cases are included to illustrate specific points and examine general trends. The reader is given a general understanding of judicial preferences for procedures to be used when effecting consent searches.