End-of-Life Decisions in Albania: The Call for an Ethical Revision

Liverpool Law Review - While in Western European countries, the end-of-life decisions have become a matter of public policy, this paper provides a detailed analysis of end-of-life decisions in...     

论社会变革与法院的角色

法院在法治实现过程中有着独特而不可替代的作用,一个成熟的法治国家是以法院角色的正确认同和充分实现为前提的。法院的司法决策以及法院能动性的发挥和法院的自我约束的平衡是在法院对自身角色进行定位和摸索过程实现的。中国在建设社会主义法治国家的进程中,法院应该也必将发挥适当而重要的作用。     

Ethical Fading: The Role of Self-Deception in Unethical Behavior

This paper examines the root of unethical dicisions by identifying the psychological forces that promote self-deception. Self-deception allows one to behave self-interestedly while, at the same time, falsely believing that one's moral principles were upheld. The end result of this internal con game is that the ethical aspects of the decision fade into the background, the moral implications obscured. In this paper we identify four enablers of self-deception, including language euphemisms, the slippery slope of decision-making, errors in perceptual causation, and constraints induced by representations of the self. We argue that current solutions to unethical behaviors in organizations, such as ethics training, do not consider the important role of these enablers and hence will be constrained in their potential, producing only limited effectiveness. Amendments to these solutions, which do consider the powerful role of self-deception in unethical decisions, are offered.     

The Changing Role of the Youth Court Judge

The last century has witnessed the creation of a number of strategies regarding youth justice and the young offender. With each change in policy has come a redefinition of the role of the youth court judge. This article discusses the traditional role of the judge, the unique role of the youth court judge, and how history has and is likely to continue to define and influence this role.     

The Impact of Juvenile Court Judge Ethical Orientation on Decision Making

This exploratory study examines the ethical ideologies of a sample of 76 juvenile court judges attending a conference using an Ethical Position Questionnaire. Potential effects of ethical orientation on judicial decision making are identified and discussed. The findings indicate a relatively even distribution of judges across ethical ideologies. The connection between ethical ideology and the prevailing juvenile justice philosophy across jurisdictions, and the importance and complexity of judicial education and training in juvenile justice, are discussed.     

The Role of Case Complexity in Judicial Decision Making

The literature on ideology and decision making offers conflicting expectations about how judges' ideology should affect their votes in cases that raise many legal issues. Using cases from the U.S. courts of appeals, I examine the strength of ideology as a predictor of sincere voting in single and multi‐issue cases, and test whether the same effect for ideology can be seen for liberal and conservative judges. For all judges, ideology yields a larger effect as the number of issues increases; however, conservative judges are much more likely than liberal judges to cast sincere votes at all levels of complexity.     

Punitive Damage Decision Making: The Decisions of Citizens and Trial Court Judges

Some states have allocated the authority to determine the amount of punitive damages to judges rather than to juries. This study explored the determination of damages by jury-eligible citizens and trial court judges. The punitive damage awards of both groups were of similar magnitude and variability. The compensatory damages of jurors were marginally lower but, in some conditions, were more variable than the compensatory damage awards of judges. Both groups appropriately utilized information about both the actual and potential severity of the harm to the plaintiff in determining punitive damages and used only the actual severity of the injury in determining compensatory damages. The punitive damage awards of both groups were influenced by the wealth of the defendant, but the compensatory damage awards of judges were marginally more influenced by defendant wealth than those of citizens. The results are discussed in the context of proposals for punitive damages reform.     

The Ethical Health Lawyer: An Empirical Assessment of Moral Decision Making

Writing in 1999, legal ethics scholar Brad Wendel noted that "[v]ery little empirical work has been done on the moral decision making of lawyers." Indeed, since the mid-1990s, few empirical studies have attempted to explore how attorneys deliberate about ethical dilemmas they encounter in their practice. Moreover, while past research has explored some of the ethical issues confronting lawyers practicing in certain specific areas of practice, no published data exists probing the moral mind of health care lawyers. As signaled by the creation of a regular column "devoted to ethical issues arising in the practice of health law" in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , the time to address the empirical gap in the professional ethics literature is now. Accordingly, this article presents data collected from 120 health care lawyers. Presenting this population with a number of hypothetical scenarios relating to how they would respond when confronting an ethical dilemma without an obvious solution or when facing a situation in which their personal values were in tension with their professional obligations, this article represents a first step toward better understanding how lawyers who practice in health care settings understand and resolve the moral discomfort they encounter in their professional lives.     

On the Frontlines: Making Decisions in Chinese Civil Environmental Lawsuits

This article looks at forty-two decisions in civil pollution cases in China as a window onto judges' political logic and the accompanying implications for environmental enforcement. The starting point is a typology of judicial decision making in one-party states based on two dimensions of decisions: the degree of legal formality (e.g., how closely judges adhere to the letter of the law) and individual autonomy (e.g., judges' power to make decisions in individual cases). Mapping pollution decisions onto this typology highlights shifting judicial strategy. While Chinese judges typically comply with instructions when the political pressure is dialed up, a combination of shifting incentives, uncertainty about the law, and political ambiguity can also allow de facto discretion in low-profile, run-of-the-mill cases. Everyday cases tend to cluster under the rubric of "rough justice" in which judges weigh competing political priorities and aim for a livable compromise that dents but upholds the status quo. This sample of cases also shows judges occasionally innovating at the margins by offering new legal interpretations or validating new types of claims. Although Chinese courts remain weak tools for environmental protection, limited innovation suggests that they can help nudge along local incremental social change.     

病人家属参与医疗决定之法律研究

在我国目前的收入结构与医疗体制之下,对于大多数人而言,一旦面对大的病患风险,家属往往是其医疗成本以及医疗后果的直接承担者。当医疗决定牵涉到家庭成员的重大利益时,患者自主权应该受到家属决定权的制约。病人并非如病患自主理论所预设的前提一样是一个自由且理性的选择者,而是一个组织社群所有关系的总和,因此个人自决并不应该豁免其社群义务,尤其是对于家庭之义务。即使是成年具有意思能力病人其家属亦应具有相应的权利。     

Building Houses on Rocks: The Role of the Ethical Infrastructure in Organizations

We present and discuss a theoretical model of an organization's ethical infrastructure, defined as the organizational elements that contribute to an organization's ethical effectiveness. We propose that the infrastructure is composed of both formal and informal elements—including communication, surveillance, and sanctioning systems—as well as organizational climates for ethics, respect, and justice. We discuss the nature of the relationship between these elements and ethical behavior, the relative strength of each of these elements, and their impact on each other. Theoretical and practical implications of this model are presented.     

Experts Judging Experts: The Role of Expertise in Reviewing Agency Decision Making

What role does judicial subject matter expertise play in the review of agency decisions? Using a data set of decisions in which the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) is reviewed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, we investigate this question and find that greater subject matter expertise does make it more likely that a judge will vote to reverse an agency decision.