From both sides now: informed consent, organ transplantation, and family-based disclosure

Drawing on the legal and social development of the right of individual patients to give informed consent to medical treatment, this article explores some implications of heroic life-saving measures in medicine that are made possibly by unprecedented advances in medical technology. Talcing cardiac transplantation as its primary example, the article examines the broader effects, both short-term and long-term, on family members as well as on the patient of this and similar types of heroic treatment. The author then offers a novel legal theory: where the heroic measure holds the risk of serious or life threatening changes, not just for the patients themselves but for their intimately connected family members as well, those members ought to have a legal right to participate in the informed consent process. The author sketches the contours of such a right and defends it in the face of various objections that may be made to it. I've looked at life from both sides now from win and lose, and still somehow it's life's illusions I recall. I really don't know life at all. (“Both Sides Now,” on Colors of the Day: The Best of Judy Collins, Electra Records 1972)     

Challenging statutory limitations on children's education rights: a re-examination of the Canadian Supreme Court Decision in Auton

The 2004 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Auton concerns the right of autistic children to access services held by their parents to be essential to their children's ability to participate as members of a democratic society. It is argued that the child's right to have his or her basic developmental needs met is a constitutionally protected one. Having those developmental needs met engages both education and health rights. In Auton the parents had sought funding for the service at issue from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Children and Families (which dealt with mental health services and other particular support programs for the families of disabled children) as well as from the Ministry of Education. The case raises central questions regarding the very nature of education and the constitutionality of a discretionary power of government to set out statutory limitations upon fundamental human rights including education rights.     

DIVORCE MEDIATION: Research and Reflections

Mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) grew rapidly in the last few decades as a result of high divorce rates, frequent conflicts between parting parents, the resulting administrative burden on courts, and especially concerns about damaging effects on children and postdivorce family relationships. This article focuses on our longitudinal research involving randomized trials of mediation and adversary settlement to support the conclusions that mediation can: (1) settle a large percentage of cases otherwise headed for court; (2) possibly speed settlement, save money, and increase compliance with agreements; (3) clearly increase party satisfaction; and (4) most importantly, lead to remarkably improved relationships between nonresidential parents and children, as well as between divorced parents—even twelve years after dispute settlement. The key "active ingredients" of mediation are likely to include: (1) the call for parental cooperation over the long run of co-parenting beyond the crisis of separation, (2) the opportunity to address underlying emotional issues (albeit briefly), (3) helping parents to establish a businesslike relationship, and (4) the avoidance of divisive negotiations at a critical time for family relationships. We call for more research on mediation and other forms of ADR, as well as a renewal of the excitement and optimism of the "first generation" of mediators, qualities that are "active ingredients" in any successful social or psychological intervention.     

The right to minority language public school education as a function of the equality guarantee: a reanalysis of the Gosselin Supreme Court of Canada Charter case

This paper concerns a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision dealing ostensibly with the protection of language minority rights. The case, in fact, however, concerns the Court imposing statutory limits on constitutionally guaranteed equality and liberty rights. The Court in the instant case held as constitutional Quebec legislation permitting access to English language schools only to children who have received, or are receiving the majority of their instruction in English in Canada, or whose parents received the majority of their instruction in English in Canada at the primary school level. The appellants, members of the French majority in Quebec, could not meet those eligibility criteria. Therefore, they were held to have no right to access English language public schools for their children. The ruling, as discussed, is inconsistent with the equality and liberty guarantees as well as the minority language protection clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.     

NEW ISSUES IN THE LOGIC OF POLICY ANALYSIS

Case studies of social interventions need not exchange relevance for rigor, provided analysts keep three methodological issues in mind. First, certain critical tests can and should be performed to help establish causal relations even when empirical data are limited. Second, "causell is an explanatory category representing a moral judgment. Third, case studies should provide some systematic attempt to evaluate the program under scrutiny. The article entitled "Social-Problem Solving in a Revolutionary Setting: Nicaragua's Pesticide Policy Reforms" by Douglas L. Murray (Policy Studies Review, November 1984) is used to illustrate these issues.