Minors' rights to consent to treatment: navigating the complexity of State laws

State laws recognize that a competent adult patient has the right to consent to or refuse medical treatment. While the law is clear with regard to the right of competent adults, state statutes are more complicated when the patient is a minor. While the law should, and does, attempt to balance the rights and obligations of parents and guardians against the access and privacy rights of minors, complicated state statutory schemes often fail to simultaneously address those contrasting goals in a consistent and uniform manner. The result is a confusing set of seemingly arbitrary and sometimes conflicting provisions that require the detailed attention of healthcare providers to ensure legal compliance. With the aim of helping healthcare practitioners meet their legal obligations, this Article examines state laws governing minor's consent rights byfocusing on the instances in which a minor's parent, guardian, or other authorized adult is permitted to consent to treatment on behalf of a minor and the instances in which a minor is authorized to act independent of adult intervention.     

The International Criminal Court and the Control of State Crime: Prospects and Problems

Over the past two decades, crimes committed by nation states has received strong theoretical and empirical attention from critical criminologists. Much of this work has highlighted the lack of internal and external mechanisms to control such injurious behavior. Potentially, this has now changed. In the summer of 1998, delegates from nearly 140 countries created the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). Entering into force in the summer of 2002, the ICC has unprecedented international jurisdiction over the crimes of genocide, war, aggression, and those against humanity. This paper provides a brief history of international law and attempts to develop an ICC. It then examines the functioning and structure of the ICC as established in the Rome Statute. We then proceed to analyze the potential which the ICC posses to control state criminality. Our analysis concludes with discussions of how the ICC might be modified to better act as a deterrent to such offending.     

Caribbean: Regional support for HIV/AIDS law and policy reform

In this article, David Patterson describes the second regional training workshop on HIV/AIDS, law, ethics, and human rights, which took place in Georgetown, Guyana in November 2003; and a grant from the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund) to the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP). The grant focuses on human rights, prevention, and care and support.     

The co-regulation of medical discipline: challenging medical peer review

The medical profession has always fiercely defended its right to self-regulation on the basis of peer review. However, in New South Wales, Australia, the profession has willingly surrendered these rights in favour of a disciplinary system known as co-regulation or collaborative regulation, under which disciplinary processes are shared with a "lay" body, the Health Care Complaints Commission. The system constitutes a unique situation in the history of medical regulation. This article examines the origin and operations of co-regulation and comes to the conclusion that its successful operation over the last decade raises questions about whether peer review is indispensable as the basis of medical regulation.