Legal Defense Research Articles

Caring for Patients Using Medical Marijuana

Since 1996, 33 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and all Canadian provinces have passed legislation legalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Another 13 states allow use of low delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol/high cannabidiol products for medical reasons in some situations or as a legal defense to its use. Yet cannabis remains a Schedule I Controlled Substance, impacting not only the legality of a healthcare provider's prescription of cannabis outside of a medical marijuana program, but also the accessibility of marijuana available for research. The classification of cannabis as a Schedule I Controlled Substance therefore directly limits the amount of moderate- to high-quality human evidence regarding the effectiveness of cannabis for certain conditions, dosage, adverse effects, or safety. Regardless of the limited evidence, individuals are using medical cannabis products more frequently, and nurses are left without evidence-based, clinical resources when caring for them. To address this lack of resources, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing Board of Directors appointed members to the Medical Marijuana Nursing Guidelines Committee to develop recommendations to guide nurses' care of patients using medical marijuana. This article presents their recommendations, which were published in July 2018, and various updates since that publication.

Hate, Conflict, and Public Space: Stand Your Ground Laws and Potential Immunity for Hate Crimes

Statistics reveal that hate crimes in the United States have increased for the past two years in a row. From 2014 to 2016, the number of reported hate crimes has increased from 5,479 in 2014, to 5,850 in 2015, to 6,121 in 2016. These numbers do not include crimes that were not shared with the FBI by local law enforcement, or crimes that were not reported to the police at all. Early indicators reveal that the number of hate crimes in 2017 is expected to further continue this upward trend. The current social and political climate has raised much concern regarding the reported increase in hate crimes, and the safety of persons who may be the targets of bias-motivated crime. One concern that has not received much attention in the scholarly literature or otherwise is the intersection of hate crimes and Stand Your Ground laws. Stand Your Ground laws remove the “duty to retreat” requirement in claims of self-defense, and permit a person to use any force necessary to protect oneself when in a public place that the person has a right to occupy. Empirical research on Stand Your Ground laws indicates that these laws contributed to an increase in homicide rates in states that offer Stand Your Ground as a legal defense, and that these laws have an implicit racial bias that affects the outcome of Stand Your Ground criminal cases. As written, these laws offer much subjectivity to the person employing the Stand Your Ground defense. This study examines the use of Stand Your Ground laws as a legal defense and suggests that, given the current social and political climate, these laws need to be modified to ensure that violence against others because of bias or prejudice cannot be translated into fear for one’s safety, and therefore, a justifiable defense for hate crimes.

Public Perceptions of Moral Insanity in the 19th Century.

The diagnosis of moral insanity was primarily used through the best part of the 19th century to define and justify the psychiatric treatment of a particular type of conduct in which the patient seemed otherwise rational but displayed certain inexplicable and undesirable behaviors deemed socially perverse or "unfit." This article traces the history of this highly contested concept, which mirrors a historical arc in which psychiatry emerges as a discipline and stakes territorial claims on defining and regulating moral behavior. As illustration, I focus on the Hinchman Conspiracy Trial of 1849 as a less known case of wrongful confinement that hinged on proving the diagnosis of moral insanity in court. Moral insanity is a case study of the efforts to medicalize human ethical conduct, an effort starkly resisted by both the courts and the public. Some of the legacies of the term are the contemporary use of insanity as a legal defense, and the ability of patients to dispute psychiatric ward confinement orders in court.

Peranan Advokat Dalam Pembelaan Hukum terhadap Terdakwa Korupsi di Pengadilan Tindak Pidana Korupsi pada Pengadilan Negeri Samarinda (Tinjauan Etika Profesi Hukum)

Smart and faithful people will never argue, that the State of the Republic of Indonesia is falling apart, debts mounting, to the point of reaching Rp. 4,000 (Four Thousand) Trillion is due to the crime of corruption that has taken root, curbed, thrived as if allowed to happen continuously. While law enforcement in this country does not provide a judicial verdict that has a deterrent effect for corruptors. It is difficult to understand in general, whether the legal verdict for corruption perpetrators by the Panel of Judges who hear and decide the case of corruption is influenced by the interference of fellow law enforcers ..., in this case, Advocates and Public Prosecutors (Prosecutors). Decisions of Corruption Courts often cause disparity in decisions, resulting in speculation from the public and assessing such decisions as being disproportionate and giving rise to public assumptions of a conspiracy between law enforcers, namely with several categories of interests, including: (1) The interests of the Prosecutor and Judges are in the interest of getting bribes (2) Advocates as law enforcers who accompany the defendant in defence of the interests of the accused by dirty and disgusting bribes. The role of advocates is very important in creating and maintaining a clean, authoritative and civilized justice system for the realization of the legal authority in this country.Thus, legal advocates must have faith and devotion to God strong and sturdy table and must dare to appear clean and first cleanse themselves from dirty thoughts in the midst of carrying out the legal profession, so that the noble profession is not polluted into contempt resulting from violation of legal norms and professional code of ethics by advocates. Based on the outputs achieved in this research program, namely the willingness and bottomlessness of the Advocates in defending the interests of the defendant must comply with the provisions of the applicable laws and regulations and uphold the Code of Ethics Procession.The analysis of this paper shows that lawyers have made a legal defence of corruption defendants in a professional manner in accordance with applicable legal provisions and upholds the code of ethics of the legal profession, even though there is also information about an advocate who is trying to bribe one of the Corruption Crimes judges in a case. which is being handled by the Advocate concerned. The description of the results of this survey is expected to be used as input and advice that can help realize the Court's decision which has a deterrent effect on corruptors and potential corruptors in the future.

Problems of protecting the private life security during the removal of information on transport telecommunication

The article, on the basis of the condition of the theory of the perception, analyzes some aspects of adhering to the human rights and liberties carrying such a secret investigation action as removal if information about transport telecommunication webs with the purpose of not spreading of register about private life of individuals. The author emphasizes the right to private life provides the individual with the defense from any incursion, in particular in the way of interception of phone calls, familiarizing with his letters or messages, and the diffusion of their content, or the fact of having written the letters or private calls. A democratic state has to supply an individual with the realization of these rights and liberties and to regulate the mechanism of the legal defense in case of its illegal violation.The author investigated the content of its investigation action and its standardizing of international legal documents, the Constitution of Ukraine, laws of Ukraine, decision of the European court of Human rights. On the basis given below, it was suggested to change Article 263 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine; particularly, to expand Article 263 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine by Part 5 of the following content: “Having the thread of execution of violation, blackmailing and other criminal actions against the victim, witness, or his relatives, removal of the information about transport telecommunication webs, it is allowed by the written announcement of every adult individual who lives in the apartment and by the absence of such announcement and/or agreement on the basis of the court decree”.Article received 25.02.2019

Plantas psicoactivas, fronteras e (I)legalidad.

Objetivo. Visibilizar las tensiones normativas que existen entre el derecho internacional de los derechos humanos y los tratados internacionales sobre control de drogas. Metodología. La fundación ICEERS creó el Ayahuasca Defense Fund (“ADF”), un programa que se encarga de la defensa legal de personas que enfrentan procesos penales por el uso de etnobotánicos. Para el presente análisis, se han tomado en consideración las sentencias y resoluciones judiciales más trascedentes que hemos recopilado desde el año 2009. Resultados. Hasta el momento, tres grandes conjuntos de resoluciones son detectables; en primer lugar, la “interpretación restrictiva”; el segundo, la “interpretación conciliatoria” y, por último, la “interpretación biocultural”. Conclusiones. Ante las lagunas legales en las que se encuentran algunas de las plantas psicoactivas, algunos operadores jurídicos comienzan a integrar una fuerte perspectiva de derechos humanos, conciliando así la tensión normativa que existe entre el derecho internacional sobre el control de drogas y el derecho doméstico.

PENERAPAN BANTUAN HUKUM DI INDONESIA

law (rechtsstaat) recognizes and protects human rights. All people must be treated equally in the law. Equality in law must be balanced with equal treatment. Legal assistance is the right of a person who is involved in a criminal case to be able to prepare a defense or counseling in upholding his rights as a suspect. Everyone has the right to receive legal assistance from an advocate, no one may be denied the right to obtain a legal defense in a legal state. Provision of legal assistance does not look at religious, ancestral, racial, ethnic, political beliefs, socio-economic strata, skin color and gender. Thus, justice will be realized for everyone

The Cost to Society of Pharmaceutical Mass Tort Litigation

This lecture for the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, addresses the cost to society of pharmaceutical mass tort litigation, nearly 15 years after the withdrawal by Merck & Co., Inc. of Vioxx® (rofecoxib) from markets worldwide. When Merck withdrew Vioxx based on an increased relative risk of thrombotic cardiovascular events seen in the APPROVe study in “the interests of patients” and “as the responsible course to take,” the company’s stock dropped nearly 27%; it took a charge of more than USD 726 million to effect the withdrawal; physicians prescribed alternative pain relievers in the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) class such as celecoxib, diclofenac, ibuprofen, and naproxen that did not have rofecoxib’s gastrointestinal safety data; governments investigated the company; and lawyers launched more than 50,000 claims and class actions in the US and many jurisdictions across six continents. Although Merck won most of the cases heard in the United States and prevailed in jurisdictions around the world, the company spent more than USD 2 billion on its own legal defense and nearly USD 7 billion more for the resolution of Vioxx litigation and investigations through the end of 2016. When the interim results of APPROVe were received, “no other non-aspirin NSAIDs or selective COX-2 inhibitors had been studied in this large a patient group for this duration,” and no one knew whether a similar increased relative risk would be seen with other NSAIDs, such as diclofenac and ibuprofen. It now appears that all of the non-aspirin NSAIDs, with the possible exception of naproxen, have a similar cardiovascular safety profile to Vioxx. Merck spent approximately USD 10 billion in connection with withdrawing Vioxx and defending and resolving litigation and investigations. Those funds were not available to fund the discovery and development of up to four or more new breakthrough medications.

Implementation of the New York City Policy Restricting Sales of Flavored Non-Cigarette Tobacco Products.

Flavored tobacco products appeal to youth, and jurisdictions have implemented policy interventions to reduce youth tobacco initiation. This study reviews the process, challenges, and compliance monitoring of a flavored tobacco sales restriction. New York City (NYC) passed a policy restricting the sale of flavored non-cigarette tobacco products in 2009. To describe the policy's passage, legal defense, implementation, and enforcement, we conducted stakeholder interviews, reviewed legislative and legal records, and analyzed administrative data on retailer inspections and violations. Extensive public and policy maker education efforts preceded this policy. Barriers included opposition to the policy's passage and a tobacco manufacturer's lawsuit that sought to halt the law's implementation and to establish that NYC lacked the authority to restrict the sale of flavored products. The city implemented the flavored tobacco policy as intended and it withstood legal challenges. NYC integrated enforcement into the city's retailer compliance monitoring infrastructure, and the violation rate is low. Our investigation of NYC's experience with flavored tobacco policy implementation and enforcement can provide policy makers and health professionals with insights relevant to policy implementation, expand understanding of the potential impact of these kinds of policies, and inform compliance monitoring efforts.

Parties, issues, and power: women’s partisan representation on German parliamentary committees

This study examines the representation of women Members of Parliament on parliamentary committees in the German Bundestag since 1990. In line with theories on the social construction of gender, our descriptive analyses show that women Members of Parliament tend to be over-represented on committees handling issues such as health and family, and under-represented on committees handling issues such as foreign and legal affairs and defence. However, party differences in the over- and under-representation of women on certain committees occur. Gender segregation is strongest within the conservative parties, which also tend to have the lowest proportion of women, and weakest within the left-wing parties.

Influence modeling: Mathematical programming representations of persuasion under either risk or uncertainty

Abstract Persuasion is a fundamental element of human interaction applied to both individuals and populations. Although persuasion is a well-studied, interdisciplinary field of research, this work advances its prescriptive, quantitative characterization, and future use. That is, this research complements the qualitative psychological literature with respect to the processing of persuasive messages by developing mathematical programming formulations to identify an optimal influence campaign. We adapt the classic Decision Analysis problem to a bilevel mathematical program, wherein a persuader has the opportunity to affect the environment prior to the decisionmaker’s choice. Thereby, we define a new class of problems for modeling persuasion. Utilizing Cumulative Prospect Theory as a descriptive framework of choice, we transform the persuasion problem to a single level mathematical programming formulation, adaptable to conditions of either risk or uncertainty. These generalized models allow for the malleability of prospects as well as Cumulative Prospect Theory parameters through persuasion update functions. We detail the literature that supports the quantification of such effects which, in turn, establishes that such update functions can be realized. Finally, the efficacy of the model is illustrated through three use cases under varying conditions of risk or uncertainty: the establishment of insurance policies, the construction of a legal defense, and the development of a public pension program.

Addiction, Responsibility, and Neuroscience

The article addresses the question whether substance addiction should be a moral excuse and legal defense for crimes done by addicts when those crimes are related to their addiction (typically the behaviors in question are use and acquisition of drugs). The conclusion is a qualified no, with room for that answer to be modified by future research in neuroscience. The article proceeds in five parts. First, the legal doctrines denying addiction as an defense are briefly described. Second, the question of how addiction should be conceptualized is raised, with attention being devoted to the methodological question of whether the law can and should use the medical conceptualization of addiction. Third, the question of why addicts use drugs is examined. Willing addicts (for whom drug use is rational) are distinguished from unwilling addicts (for whom it is not); it is unwilling addicts that are of interest because their unwillingness exhibits numerous but distinct defects of rationality that explain why addicts continue to do something so harmful to their interests despite their knowledge that that is what they are doing. The conclusion reached here is that the explanations of addicted behavior are diverse and different for different addicts on different occasions of their use, precluding any general, across the board explanation applicable to all acts by unwilling addicts. Fourth, the moral question is then raised as to whether any of the explanations of the behavior of unwilling addicts excuses them from responsibility for such of that behavior as is wrongful and criminal. The conclusion reached is generally in the negative, but given the diversity of motivations for why addicts continue to use drugs, that conclusion is not universal: some addicts do deserve to be excused. Fifth, two generations of research in the neuroscience of addiction are surveyed and the findings of that research plumbed to see whether the explanatory and moral conclusions discussed above need to be changed. Many have argued that neuroscience has shown that addiction should be a general excuse; grounds are given to reject all such claims. Still, the possibility is held open that future neuroscientific research on specific issues and in specific directions might yet show that addiction excuses more generally than is currently recognized.

Attenuated Governance: How Policymakers Insulate Private School Choice from Legal Challenge

Indirect or delegated governance engages private organizations, tax expenditures, or service users to deliver programs that would otherwise be provided by the government directly. This paper explains the rise of indirect governance in terms of policymakers’ strategic use of “attenuation” to avoid political and legal challenge. Attenuation is the process by which a government obscures its role in promoting a particular policy goal, through communication strategies (attenuating rhetoric), or by utilizing private third parties and the tax system to deliver a benefit (attenuated design). Deploying policy‐maker interviews and an original historical database of private school choice programs and their legal and political defense, 1953–2017, I argue that pursuing both attenuated design and attenuating rhetoric at once helps policies pass and spread by publicly dissociating the government from legally contentious policy outputs.

In Memoriam

In Memoriam

From #MeToo to #TimesUp in health care: can a culture of accountability end inequity and harassment?

From #MeToo to #TimesUp in health care: can a culture of accountability end inequity and harassment?

De(Re)Constructing Narratives in Intellectual Property Law: Transformative Play, Culture Jamming, and Poststructural Disruptions

In his critique of consumption, Jean Baudrillard contends that the consumer no longer relates to a particular object in its specific utility, but to a set of objects in its total signification. Thus, increasingly, when consumers make their purchases, they do not simply select goods and services purely for their functional or utilitarian values, but are buying into the significations of these commodities in the construction of their self-identities. Objects of intellectual property (IP), in particular copyrighted works, trademarks and the celebrity personality, represent far more than a bundle of legal rights. They are invariably associated with a set of cultural narratives and semiotic meanings which are ultimately consumed. A well-known literary or artistic work does much more than simply educate, inform or entertain; it also functions as a signifier of a set of signified meanings. A trademark does not only designate the source or origin of goods. Famous brands like Louis Vuitton, Apple and Nike possess particular configurations of meanings that offer peculiarly powerful affirmations of belonging and recognition in the lives of their customers worldwide. Celebrities, whose identities may be protected against commercial appropriation by the right of publicity, have become common points of reference for millions of individuals who may never interact with one another, but who have, by virtue of their participation in a mediated culture, a shared experience and a collective memory. This essay explores how the encoded narratives in certain objects of IP may be read as polysemous texts that invite playful semiotic recodings, culture jamming and poststructural disruptions. It also suggests how audiences who engage with works of copyright, trademarks and celebrities via such textual signification may avail themselves of a number of legal defences under the current legal regime.

Securing Adequate Legal Defense in Proceedings under International Investment Agreements: A Scoping Study

Securing Adequate Legal Defense in Proceedings under International Investment Agreements: A Scoping Study

Resisting “Law and Order” in California: Howard Moore Jr., Angela Davis, and the Politics of Prison Radicalism

Resisting “Law and Order” in California: Howard Moore Jr., Angela Davis, and the Politics of Prison Radicalism

Reflexiones escépticas, principiológicas y económicas sobre el consentimiento necesario para la recolección y tratamiento de datos

Is there a correspondence or affinity between the juridicalprincipiological and factual-economical conceptions for the effective protection of the consent of the holder of personal data when hiring in a network?Under the mantle of the present question, it aims to analyze the contemporary contractual scenario under the perspective of the privacy policy and the Brazilian General Data Protection Law (LGPD). In this context, it is proposed a skeptical reflection on the principles and economic guidelines defended by law and doctrine to verify if the consent is an instrument of real effectiveness to the tutelage of the subjects in network. The first topic concerns the conceptual and conceptual analysis of consent in the LGPD and in the specialized doctrine. The second topic deals with the limited rationality of the users of the network services in understanding the dispositions in the policies of privacy and in the terms of electronic services. At the end, it is concluded that despite the juridical and legal defense aimed at solidifying consent as an indispensable tool for collecting and processing data, the current electronic contractual model does not allow its effective concretization, proposing, in this case, an alternative. The rationale is anchored in the deductive, bibliographical and integrated research methods and in the case study technique.

FATHER STEPAN ONYSHKEVYCH: THE CREATOR AND BUILDER OF ZUNR

Rev. Stepan Onyshkevych was the founder and organizer of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) in exile. At the beginning of the 20th century, the personae of a Greek Catholic priest S. Onyshkevych (12/21/1861 – 12/16/1944), brightly stood out among other famous persons of Galicia. S. Onyshkevych together with Mychajlo Hrushevskyy, Ivan Franko, Volodymyr Okhrymovych and others founded the National Democratic Party which was one of the most popular political parties in Ukraine at that time. Onyshkevych a leading representative as well as a member of the Ukrainian National Council and its provisional parliament was instrumental in laying down the economic and legal and agrarian foundations of this newly created state known as ZUNR. Based on his memoirs and different sources, the milestones of his life and activities have been studied and analyzed. For example, the author found out that S. Onyshkevych had been the ambassador to the Austro-Hungarian parliament. He was instrumental in forming local policy in Rudkivskyi County while organizing and founding the UNR in exile, a member of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance (UNDO), and its local leadership. Another aspect of his life's achievement was economic and entrepreneurial activities like organizing different cooperatives (dairy, loan, basketry coops), public and youth organizations ("Ridna Shkola," society "Sich," fire brigade, drama club, etc.). Of great importance was the creation of a legal defense committee for farmers and Ukrainian peasants. He furthered a farmers union. This research aims to uncover the personae of Stepan Onyshkevych, and his community policies and his involvement as such. A methodical basis for this is a complex approach in analyzing this situation. Keywords: pastoral and political activity, West Ukrainian People's Republic, public organizations, cooperative movements.