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JournalISSN: 1044-6419

The Journal of Law and Health 

Cleveland State University
About: The Journal of Law and Health is an academic journal published by Cleveland State University. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Health care & Legislation. It has an ISSN identifier of 1044-6419. Over the lifetime, 235 publications have been published receiving 923 citations.


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Journal Article
TL;DR: This paper found that from 20% to 35% of attorneys are "clinically distressed" (which the authors define as "in need of professional help") and these levels of distress are found in only about 2% of the general population, and indicate that a very large number of lawyers are indeed living the appearance of a good life but the reality of misery.
Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION The current state of the legal profession confirms my personal lessons as a law student, litigation attorney, and clinical law teacher:(3) students are not told in law school what they really need to know to have meaningful and healthful lives as lawyers. Unfortunately and to the contrary, it also seems to me that some of the things many of us do learn in law school--largely from the culture rather than the curriculum--affirmatively contribute to the many problems facing the profession and its practitioners today.(4) It is hardly debatable any longer that the profession and its practitioners are suffering broadly from many serious problems. Indeed, studies have concluded that lawyers and law students are much more likely than the general population to experience emotional distress, depression, anxiety, addictions, and other related mental, physical, and social problems.(5) These studies confirm the common experience of student distress during law school, the negative public perception of lawyers, and simple observation of attorney behavior: lawyers as a group tend to be stressed and relatively unhappy people.(6) A particularly striking study by psychologists Beck, Sales, and Benjamin found that, on a variety of psychological scales, from 20% to 35% of attorneys are "clinically distressed" (which the authors define as "in need of professional help").(7) These levels of distress are found in only about 2% of the general population,(8) and indicate that a very large number of attorneys are indeed living the appearance of a good life but the reality of misery. Many commentators call for law schools to address these matters directly.(9) This article offers a unifying, and hopefully clarifying, theory on many of these problems, my approach to presenting and reinforcing this theory for students and attorneys, and early indications that this approach is effective. Since becoming a law teacher, I have been struck by the number of law students I see exhibiting tension and personal malaise reminiscent of that which I, and many others I have known, have experienced as students and attorneys. After a few years of observing the particularly persistent performance anxiety in my classes, it struck me that Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Human Needs,"(10) commonly taught in undergraduate psychology courses, might explain the tension I was seeing. I also began to see that the Hierarchy, in combination with basic concepts from addiction theory, might help us understand many of the current problems in the profession. Could the dissatisfaction, distress, and lack of decent behavior among attorneys be understood, in essence, as manifestations of our collective inability to grow beyond the immature levels of psychological functioning which Maslow labeled "lower needs" in his motivation theory?(11) I sensed that this analytical framework could take my classes beyond the sense of lecturing and moralizing that attends much of our efforts to encourage professionalism, and prove practically useful to students and lawyers for a variety of reasons. First, it describes the natural process of human growth toward fulfillment--precisely the quality apparently most lacking in student and attorney life. Second, the theory can explain concerns of immediate relevance to most listeners--including anxiety, incivility, excessive competitiveness, and personal dissatisfaction--as reflections of immature levels of human development. I thought that the very nature of such a perspective would motivate students and practitioners to disfavor these negative qualities (rather than accept them as inevitable concomitants of their association with the law) and to "grow up" into the mature states of adult life described by Maslow's work.(12) Further study of Maslow's work brought another level of potential usefulness to my attention: his description of self-actualizing people--the healthiest and most mature subjects he could find--describes as well the highly professional attorneys we aspire to train or become. …

37 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEIA) as mentioned in this paper was the most recent reauthorization of the IDEA, which improved the substantive standard of review for an IEP.
Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION II. THE HISTORY OF THE INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT ACT A. Background B. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act C. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. D. 1997 Amendments to the Individual with Disabilities Education Act III. BOARD OF EDUCATION V. ROWLEY: THE SUBSTANTIVE STANDARD DEFINING "APPROPRIATE" A. Facts and Procedural History B. The Supreme Court's Opinion IV. THE "EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY" STANDARD A. Justice Blackmun's Concurrence B. Justice White's Dissent V. POST-ROWLEY DECISIONS A. Polk v. Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit 16 B. Deal v. Hamilton County Board of Education VI. THE INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT ACT: A CALL TO INCREASE THE SUBSTANTIVE STANDARD DEFINING "APPROPRIATE" A. IEP Amendments B. Highly Qualified Teachers VII. CONGRESSIONAL INTENT AND THE INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT ACT VIII. THE ADOPTION OF A NEW SUBSTANTIVE STANDARD IX. FINANCIAL CONCERNS A. Past Financial Difficulties B. Resolutions to Solve Financial Difficulties X. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION Christopher, diagnosed at six years old with Asperger's Syndrome, (1) is a child with a disability. (2) Upon his diagnosis, Christopher's public school developed his Individualized Education Program (IEP) (3) to serve Christopher's educational needs; however, his needs went unmet. Throughout Christopher's four years at his public school, his parents repeatedly met with school officials about the appropriateness of services being offered to Christopher as his IEP did not account for the individualized class support Christopher required. (4) Despite consistent and dedicated efforts by his parents, school officials continually informed them there was nothing more the school or teachers could do. (5) Unwilling to risk their son's educational future and unsure they would be able to disprove the vague "meaningful educational benefit" substantive standard of review for an IEP, Christopher's parents assumed the costs of placing their child in a private school specializing in educating children with disabilities. (6) The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA or the Act) identifies thirteen categories of disabilities that qualify children for its educational protections. (7) The Act was devised to provide children with qualifying disabilities a "free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living." (8) Problematic, however, is IDEA's failure to define the term "appropriate." (9) Therefore, the United States Supreme Court in Board of Education v. Rowley (10) defined "appropriate" by stating schools have met this substantive standard if an IEP confers "some educational benefit." (11) This definition, "conferring an educational benefit," (12) has purposely been left very broad as the courts have avoided establishing more stringent guidelines regarding the substantive aspect of an IEP. (13) The recent Reauthorization of the IDEA seeks to raise the bar regarding what constitutes an "appropriate" education. The Reauthorized IDEA, which became effective July 1, 2005 and entitled the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEIA), amended the IDEA and changed the established substantive guideline by emphasizing and outlining new provisions that must be present for an IEP to be deemed "appropriate" in addition to increasing training and qualifications of special educators. (14) These substantive provisions require courts to alter their interpretations of what is considered an "appropriate" education for students with disabilities. …

23 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: Prescription drug advertisements directed to the consumer have the potential to be excellent sources of consumer information and should therefore not be banned outright and the effectiveness of the current FDA regulatory scheme regarding consumer-directed prescription drug advertising is evaluated.
Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION Over the past two decades, and to a greater extent recently, society has been increasingly exposed to prescription drug advertisements aimed directly at the consumer. The industry's gradual shift in focus from "physician-directed" to "consumer-directed" advertisements poses a threat to the public health because it may have the effect of misleading consumers by understating a drug's adverse reactions and overstating the benefits. The increase in consumer-directed advertising has helped to foster a health care atmosphere in which it is the patient, and not the medical practitioner, who initiates a discussion regarding possible drug therapy.(2) Consumer-directed advertising also has a profound impact on the doctor-patient relationship and results in patients consuming drugs with attractive benefits and undisclosed possible adverse reactions. This creates an increased dependence on prescription drugs, and the falsified notion that there is a prescription drug to cure most any condition.(3) The effects that consumer-directed advertising of prescription drugs have on the health care system warrant a thorough review and modification of the existing United States Food and Drug Agency (FDA) regulations in order to preserve the public health.(4) To date, the FDA regulations have remained unresponsive to this change in advertising focus. In a draft guidance(5) issued by the FDA, the agency has actually made advertising of prescription drugs easier by making disclosure requirements of adverse drug reactions(6) less stringent for broadcast advertisements. The current regulatory system in place by the FDA(7) is inadequate to deal with current issues surrounding consumer-directed advertising. This is due in large part because the regulations currently in effect were implemented in 1938 before the advent of this new breed of advertising.(8) There is no doubt that the nature of advertising has changed significantly since that time and an updated version of regulations is needed to protect the public. Consumers' quest for and access to information has been accompanied by an increase in the patient's role in his or her health care treatment.(9) Prescription drug advertisements directed to the consumer have the potential to be excellent sources of consumer information and should therefore not be banned outright.(10) Greater access to patient information certainly enables the patient to take a more active role in their treatment. The public health problems discussed in this Paper are undoubtedly caused by a number of concurrently occurring problems. The solution set out here is to construct a more stringent FDA regulatory scheme which seeks to minimize this problem, while acknowledging that it will not eliminate it. This Paper will evaluate the effectiveness of the current FDA regulatory scheme regarding consumer-directed prescription drug advertising. Part II discusses the relevant history of consumer-directed advertising of prescription drugs which is a relatively new practice in the United States. Possible explanations are reviewed for why the change in focus from physicians to consumers as the targets of such advertising has occurred. Part III explains the major classifications of consumer-directed advertising that the FDA has categorized and examines the differences existing among them. Part IV focuses on the current FDA regulatory scheme and begins to expose some of the difficulties of applying the current regulations to consumer-directed advertisements. Part V explores specific effects the FDA regulations have on our current healthcare system. These include: (1) downplayed adverse drug reactions; (2) inconsistent scope and quantity of adverse drug reactions advertised; (3) the increased cost to society; (4) deterrence; and (5) increased strain on the doctor-patient relationship. Recommendations for effectively strengthening the FDA regulations are included in Part VI. …

22 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The paper proposes an appropriate revised procedure for use by procurement staff in counseling with families of deceased declared donors, arguing to the contrary that consenting to the removal and transfer of one's own organs after death is a moral duty.
Abstract: The practices of organ procurement and organ donor recruitment in the United States rest upon two significant but incorrect assumptions. The first is that validly signed donor cards have merely advisorial function; that is, that their purpose is simply to communicate the supposedly nonbinding desires of deceased or incompetent potential donors to serve as sources of lifesaving organs and tissues after death. Procurement personnel do not accord these documents the legal force of wills. Hence, they invariably ask families of all potential donors declared and undeclared for permission to remove organs and tissues from deceased kin. This practice is, however, (a) inconsistent with both the spirit and the letter of nearly all state Uniform Anatomical Gift Acts; (b) inconsistent with the defensible claim that the majority of interests bound up with ownership apply to the relation of a person to his or her body during life and after death; and (c) almost unanimously judged to be morally unacceptable by respondents in two recent empirical surveys..The paper proposes an appropriate revised procedure for use by procurement staff in counseling with families of deceased declared donors. A second incorrect assumption lies at the heart of donor recruitment campaigns. This is the assumption that consenting to the posthumous removal of organs from one's own body is an act of charity, a work of superergogation. The author argues to the contrary that consenting to the removal and transfer of one's own organs after death is a moral duty. The duty to consent is derivative from a more general moral duty variously called the duty of mutual aid or the duty to attempt an easy rescue of an endangered person (or persons). So, while it is true that every individual has first authority, i.e., paramount right over all others, to control the posthumous disposition of his or her own body parts after death, the author argues that this right is overridden by the more weighty moral duty to consent to the removal and transfer of personal organs after death. * Chairman, Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, River Falls,

22 citations

Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Journal in previous years
YearPapers
20226
20192
20184
20173
20165
20157