Right Function Research Articles

A Critical Review of Published Competency-to-Confess Measures.

The development of standardized assessments for competency-to-confess evaluations has remained largely neglected for the last several decades. Groundbreaking research was conducted on Miranda waivers during the late 1970s, but researchers have failed to sustain programmatic research. This critical review focuses on four published Miranda measures (Comprehension of Miranda Rights, Comprehension of Miranda Rights-Recognition, Comprehension of Miranda Vocabulary, and Function of Rights in Interrogation). When evaluated by contemporary standards, the validation of these measures is very limited. Major improvements are needed for interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, content validity, construct validity, and criterion-related validity.

Federalism and Freedom

The argument for devolution of power to state and local governments in contemporary Supreme Court cases regularly relies on claims about the virtues of federalism as a means of maintaining individual liberty. This article explores the plausibility of the argument that supplanting federal with state authority is likely systematically to protect individual liberty. The article argues that if there is a viable argument for "federalism as freedom," it must go beyond the sense that two governments are more repressive than one or that the federal government is more inclined to curtail liberty than is a state or local authority. The plausible claims rely on the abilities of autonomous state governments to provide a competing source of norms and to allow escape from oppressive laws. The availability of sanctuaries in other states is a function of rights of interstate travel and territorial limitations on state jurisdiction, which themselves require federalized constraints on state and local autonomy.

When Is Birth Unfair to the Child?

Has a child been treated unfairly if the only it can exist is by having a n awful life? a principle of parental responsibility show how the child is wronged. Is it wrong to bring children who will have serious diseases and disabilities into the world? particular, is it unfair to them? The notion that existence itself can be an injury is the basis for a recent new tort known as life.[1] this paper considers Feinberg's theory of harm as the basis for a claim of wrongful life,' and concludes that rarely can the stringent conditions imposed by his analysis be met. Another basis for maintaining that it is morally wrong to have children under extremely adverse conditions is suggested: a principle of parental responsibility. We also argue that having children under such conditions may be unfair to the children, even if they have not been (in Feinberg's sense) harmed. Finally, we consider when conditions are sufficiently awful that having children might be viewed as incompatible with being a good parent and unfair to the child. Minimal Birthrights On one very plausible conception of rights, the function of rights is to protect interests. To understand the claim that there can be a not to be born, we must explain how someone can have an interest not being born. Born children clearly have all kinds of interests, including an interest healthy existence. A child who was injured utero, and is subsequently born, has been harmed even if it is maintained that at the time of the injury there was no being with any interests at all. fact, it is possible for a child to be harmed by negligence that occurs prior to that child's conception, when no being, not even an embryo, existed f although it must be admitted that courts have been extremely reluctant to acknowledge preconception torts). By contrast, wrongful life suits do not claim merely that the infant plaintiff was harmed before birth. They claim that the child was harmed by being born, implying an interest not having been brought into existence. Someone can be said to have an interest not being if his or her existence is inexorably and irreparably such that life is not worth living. Joel Feinberg explains the not to be this way: Talk of a right not to be born is a compendious way of referring to the plausible moral requirement that no child be brought into the world unless certain very conditions of are assured. When a child is brought into existence even though those requirements have not been observed, he has been wronged thereby. (p. 101) Feinberg goes on to suggest that these minimal conditions of well-being amount to a requirement that we not doom the child's future interests to total defeat. The advance dooming of a child's most basic interest - those essential to the existence and advancement of any ulterior interest - deprives the child of what might be called his birthrights. And if you cannot have that to which you have a birthright, you are wronged if you are brought to birth. Is the infant plaintiff a wrongful life suit also harmed by being born? Harm to Others Feinberg offers an analysis of harming as the thwarting, setting back, or defeating of an To have an interest something is to have a it: In general, a person has a stake X ... when he stands to gain or lose depending on the nature or conditions of X: One's interests, then, taken as a miscellaneous collection, consist of all those things which one has a stake.... [These] are distinguishable components of a person's well-being: he flourishes or languishes as they flourish or languish. What promotes them is to his advantage or his interest; what thwarts them is to his detriment or against his interest. (p. 34) Applying this analysis to the case of prenatal harms, Feinberg concludes that harm can be caused to a person before his birth in virtue of the later interests of the child that can already be anticipated (p. …