Making just decisions in magistrates' courts

Professional magistrates' sentencing procedures were examined as prototypic cases of expert processes involved in making just decisions, with analysis of their attention to information and the inferences they drew from case details and their own patterned knowledge. Magistrates' sorting and verbalized sentencing of six shoplifting cases revealed that they were accessing and using three schemas for categorizing shoplifters, with different emphases and valences, and different penalties. The schemas categorized shoplifters as cases of greed, need, or troubled persons. Tough magistrates followed the greed schema more than the lenient who followed the need and troubled schemas more consistently. Information use and inferences in a sample case illustrate schema differences.     

Survival at what cost? Origins and effects of the modern controversy on treating severely handicapped newborns

This paper examines the background of technological innovation, ethical debate, and social change, against which the 1980s debate over how to treat severely handicapped newborns in general, and Baby Jane Doe in particular, took place. A commentary follows examining the relative place of government, practitioners, hospital ethics committees, and parents in making decisions about treatment for handicapped newborns.     

Making economically sound confinement decisions: A response to the zedlewski thesis

This paper examines the economic costs and benefits of incarceration of criminals, elaborating upon and correcting flaws in Zedlewski’s 1987 claims that incarceration is a cost-minimizing crime prevention strategy. We use Bureau of Justice Statistics data to demonstrate gross errors in Zedlewski’s crude estimates. We find that the costs of incarceration are more than double the benefits in costs of crime avoided. We conclude that the cost-saving incapacitation effects of incarceration do not warrant either the current levels of imprisonment or any future increases.     

Making non-discriminatory fitness-for-duty decisions about persons with disabilities under the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act

This article describes an assessment role performed by clinical psychologists in the employment context, and examines how it has been evaluated by the courts from the standpoint of discrimination against persons with disabilities. Guidelines are offered for making fitness-for-duty decisions which are legally defensible, and examples of the decision-making process are provided. Data-based limitations on professional expertise are articulated, and conclusions drawn are aimed at practicing psychologists and the courts dealing with these uncertainties. Issues are analyzed principally in courts dealing with these uncertainties. Issues are analyzed principally in relation to Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which has been passed by both houses of Congress.     

Treating handicapped newborns: suggestions for institutional policy

In October 1984 a conference of physicians and other health professionals, attorneys, members of the press, ethicists, and social scientists met at the State University of New York at Stony Brook to consider the medical, ethical, and social issues raised by the treatment of handicapped newborns. Presented here is a summary of guidelines for the implementation of their most important recommendation--the establishment of institutional policies concerning the internal decision making process regarding treatment and the procedures for sharing information about controversial cases with the public. The guidelines address the medical problems of diagnosis, prognosis, and clinical decision making; institutional responses to controversy within the institution and to the media and the public; and the composition and role of institutional review committees.     

司法判决理由的法律解释的不足与完善建议

司法判决理由是司法权合理化最重要的指标,也是法官思维水平的最典型表现。作为证明司法结果正当性的关键因素,法官的法律解释构成了司法判决理由不可或缺的组成部分,理应在司法判决中得以充分展示。为了改变我国判决书中法律解释状况薄弱、判决理由不充分的局面,科学合理地写明法官对案件事实和适用法律的解释状况就势在必行。     

Ethical decisions at the edge

Medicine grows incrementally in its ability to treat patients and at the growing edge it poses problems about the appropriateness of treatments that are different from those where good practice conforms to widely agreed standards. The growth of access to medical knowledge and the diversity of contemporary theoretical and clinical medicine have spawned deep divisions in the profession and divergent opinions about what constitutes reasonable care. That hallmark of acceptable practice is also under pressures from the threat of litigation, a highly commercialised contemporary medical environment, patient demands based on medical journalism and the internet and the exponential growth of bio-medical technology. Patient empowerment can result in complaints arising in new and complex areas and expert opinion can often differ markedly depending on where on the medical spectrum the experts are aligned. This column lays out some broad-brush principles to assess the adequacy of medical advice in such a climate.