Compliance Professionalism and Regulatory Community: The Australian Trade Practices Regime

Contemporary state governance relies increasingly on regulatory strategies encouraging self-regulation and compliance for corporate regulation. This paper examines the conditions in which such strategies might be effective by reference to the Australian trade practices regime. The paper argues that regulators will only use compliance strategies effectively when (i) a community of compliance professionals with both professional integrity and commercial 'street' credibility exists to make compliance come alive in everyday corporate activities, and (ii) regulators invest in meta-evaluation of compliance professionals' activities.     

The legal role of medical professionals in decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment: part 1 (New South Wales)

This is the first article in a series of three that examines the legal role of medical professionals in decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment from adults who lack capacity. This article considers the position in New South Wales. A review of the law in this State reveals that medical professionals play significant legal roles in these decisions. However, the law is problematic in a number of respects and this is likely to impede medical professionals' legal knowledge in this area. The article examines the level of training medical professionals receive on issues such as advance directives and substitute decision-making, and the available empirical evidence as to the state of medical professionals' knowledge of the law at the end of life. It concludes that there are gaps in legal knowledge and that law reform is needed in New South Wales.     

The Future of Incidental Findings: Should They be Viewed as Benefits?

This paper argues against considering incidental fndings (IFs) as potential benefts of research when assessing the social value of proposed research, determining the appropriateness of a study's risk/beneft ratio, and identifying and disclosing the risks and benefts of participation during informed consent. The possibility of generating IFs should be disclosed during informed consent as neither a risk nor beneft, but as a possible outcome collateral to participation. Whether specifc IFs will be disclosed when identifed is a separate question whose answer is material to determining whether IFs constitute a risk or a potential indirect beneft of participation. Finally, three types of IF should be distinguished and treated diferently during informed consent: those that will be routinely generated (e.g., results of testing to determine study eligibility), those that can reasonably be characterized in terms of their nature and frequency of generation (e.g., misattributed parentage), and those of unpredictable nature and frequency that can be characterized only in general terms. Research protocols should provide a rationale for sharing or not sharing IFs of these three types with participants. Regulatory review of such plans should not, however, be confused with regarding IFs as potential benefts when assessing the study's risk/beneft ratio or merit.     

Assessing legal change: Recidivism and administrative per se laws

Tougher sanctions for drunk driving have often been advocated as a means to reduce this problematic behavior. In a test of administrative per se laws as a specific deterrent, the impact of introducing such laws is evaluated by examining reconviction rates of offenders before and after implementation of the Jaw in three states (North Dakota, Louisiana, and Mississippi), with comparisons made to a fourth state during the same time period that did not implement an administrative per se law (California). Recidivism is analyzed using survival models. The results indicate that administrative per se laws reduce rates of reconviction in some situations but not in others. In particular, if implementation of the law is accompanied by changes in overall rates of license actions, the specific deterrent effects of the law may be outweighed by the increased efficiencies of this judicial process.     

Futile choices: Wooing doctors to acknowledge the law in Queensland

End-of-life decision-making continues to challenge health care providers, patients, families, regulators and judges. The Queensland State Coroner's findings in the 2009 inquest into the death of June Woo resulted in a submission from concerned clinicians to the Queensland Law Reform Commission's review of the State's guardianship regime, claiming that the judgment held problematic implications for future practice. This column summarises the State Coroner's findings and recommendations, and critically analyses the clinical response, focusing on consent requirements that, while peculiar to Queensland, illustrate continuing tensions surrounding decision-making conflicts at the end of life.     

‘Too Much,too Indigestible,too Fast’? The Decades of Struggle for Abortion Law Reform in Northern Ireland

In July 2019, the UK Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority for fundamental reform of Northern Ireland's archaic abortion laws. Regulations implementing the reform came into effect on 25 March 2020. Drawing on extensive archival resources and a small number of interviews, we locate this extraordinary political moment in a broader historical context. We explore the factors that blocked the possibility of reform in either Westminster or Stormont for over five decades and consider what it was that had changed in 2019 to render it possible. While the measure passed in Westminster represents a radical rupture with the past, we suggest that it was anything other than sudden, rather representing the culmination of decades of sustained campaigning. We conclude by briefly discussing what this change is likely to mean for the future.