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.     

A Commonwealth of laws: at 60 and beyond

This piece considers decisions of the Commonwealth Caribbean where applicants have sought to challenge the economic rational or commercial decision of government in enacting legislation without expressly saying so. The courts have considered the question of whether parliament can legislate a reduction of salaries of public servants and privatize aspects of the public service. In the main, the courts in the Commonwealth Caribbean have been able to deal with the legal issue raised without opining on the underlying rationale for the legislation passed by parliament.     

The appointments clause: Judge Bork and the role of ideology in judicial confirmations

The Law of Obligations: The Roman Foundations of the Civilian Tradition. Reinhard Zimmermann. Cape Town: 1990. Ixiv + 1241pp. (incl. Indexes).

Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law and Policy in England, 1830–1914. Martin J. Wiener. Cambridge, 1991. The University Press, ix + 390pp. (incl. Index). £35/$39.50 hb. ISBN 0 521 35045 X.

Women, Crime and Custody in Victorian England, Lucia Zedner. Oxford, 1991. Clarenden Press. 364pp. (incl. Index). £40 hb. ISBN 0 19 820264 4.

St Albans Quarter Sessions Rolls 1784–1820. Edited with an Introduction by David Dean. Hitchen, 1991. Hertfordshire Record Publications, xx + 197pp. (incl. Indexes). £15.95 hb. ISBN 0 9510728 6 2.

The Background of the Common Law. Derek Roebuck. 2nd edn. Hong Kong, Oxford and New York, 1990. Oxford University Press, ix + 143pp. (incl. Index). £6.99 pb. ISBN 019 585165 X.

The Physician‐Legislators of France: Medicine and Politics in the Early Third Republic, 1870–1914. Jack D. Ellis. Cambridge, 1990. The University Press, xii + 305pp. (incl. Index). £35.00/$49.50 hb. ISBN 0 521 38208 4.

Combination and Conspiracy: A Legal History of Trade Unionism 1721–1906. John V. Orth. Oxford, 1991. Clarendon Press, xvi + 207pp. (incl. Index). £30hb. ISBN 0 19 825299 4.

Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Union Movement. William E. Forbath. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1991. Harvard University Press, xvi + 211pp. (incl. Index). ISBN 0 674 517814.

The State, Law and Religion: Pagan Rome, Alanwatson. Athens, Georgia, 1992. University of Georgia Press, xv + 136pp. (incl. Index). $30 hb. ISBN 0820313874.

American Constitutional Rights: Cases, Documents, and Commentary. William A. Carroll and Norman B. Smith. Lanham, USA. 1991. University Press of America, Inc. xviii + 785pp.     

Combatting peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted material via anti-piracy laws: Issues,trends, and solutions

This article analyses potential end-user copyright violations associated with peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and the anti-piracy efforts currently underway in order to tackle them. This article discusses international developments in terms of trends, issues and solutions aimed at addressing peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted material. First, the article introduces P2P file sharing, its increasing significance in the growing digital media economy, and the legal issues surrounding this topic. Next, the article provides a comparative analysis of global efforts and trends in preventing digital piracy by analyzing relevant legislation, case law and practices in multiple jurisdictions, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and Japan. In addition, the article reviews Hong Kong's current case law and proposed legal reforms including an analysis of their deficiencies with respect to addressing P2P copyright infringement. The article concludes with an analysis of existing trends in preventive measures against copyright infringement through P2P file sharing and suggests directions on future legal and non-legal measures that Hong Kong as well as the international community can take in combating digital piracy and copyright infringement through peer-to-peer file sharing.     

Racially conditional donation: the example of umbilical cord blood

While direction of donated tissue to family members has long been accepted, direction to members of specific racial groups has been opposed, on the basis that it is discriminatory and contrary to the ethos the institution of organ donation seeks to promote. It has, however, recently been proposed that racially conditional donation may provide a useful--and ethically acceptable--way to address the social inequalities and injustices experienced by certain cultural groups. This article examines the ethical, legal and cultural arguments for and against racially conditional donation, concluding that the practice is more likely to undermine the values of equity and justice than to promote them and that it may also lead to other unfavourable personal and social outcomes.     

A comparative evaluation of methods for the isolation of khlozepid from human cadaveric liver

Comparative evaluation of two isolation methods in fatal chlozepid poisoning was performed using expert material. Isolation by neutral acetone from visceral tissues showed that chlozepid and its metabolites are extracted in amounts 6-13 times greater (in terms of chlozepid) than using A. A. Vasil'eva's method. Quantitative determination was performed by photometry according to the reaction of azo dye formation after hydrochloric acid hydrolysis of the extracts.     

No iceberg in sight: on the absence of WTO disputes challenging fossil fuel subsidies

The empirical record of dispute settlement cases under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on energy subsidies consists only of cases against renewable energy (RE) subsidies, whereas WTO members have not challenged others’ much larger and environmentally harmful fossil fuel subsidies. Yet, the WTO agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures would at first sight seem to create possibilities to forestall environmentally harmful subsidization. In this article, we assess possible explanations for the skewed distribution of energy subsidies dispute settlement complaints at the WTO. We argue that differences in legally relevant characteristics of fossil fuel subsidies, on the one hand, and RE subsidies, on the other hand, largely explain this observation. In the case of RE subsidies, in particular, the disputes filed to date have targeted a much narrower set of measures than the whole range of RE subsidies currently in place, namely those incorporating a local content requirement component. Although this finding is not new, we have probed into this question more systematically, both by widening the scope of the empirical analysis from actual to potential WTO disputes on energy-related policies the European Union and the USA might have initiated, and by systematically assessing the plausibility of alternative explanations.