The Law of Life and Death

The Law of Life and Death
Author: Elizabeth Price Foley
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2011-08-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674060903

Are you alive? What makes you so sure? Most people believe this question has a clear answer—that some law defines our status as living (or not) for all purposes. But they are dead wrong. In this pioneering study, Elizabeth Price Foley examines the many, and surprisingly ambiguous, legal definitions of what counts as human life and death. Foley reveals that “not being dead” is not necessarily the same as being alive, in the eyes of the law. People, pre-viable fetuses, and post-viable fetuses have different sets of legal rights, which explains the law's seemingly inconsistent approach to stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, frozen embryos, in utero embryos, contraception, abortion, homicide, and wrongful death. In a detailed analysis that is sure to be controversial, Foley shows how the need for more organ transplants and the need to conserve health care resources are exerting steady pressure to expand the legal definition of death. As a result, death is being declared faster than ever before. The "right to die," Foley worries, may be morphing slowly into an obligation to die. Foley’s balanced, accessible chapters explore the most contentious legal issues of our time—including cryogenics, feticide, abortion, physician-assisted suicide, brain death, vegetative and minimally conscious states, informed consent, and advance directives—across constitutional, contract, tort, property, and criminal law. Ultimately, she suggests, the inconsistencies and ambiguities in U.S. laws governing life and death may be culturally, and perhaps even psychologically, necessary for an enormous and diverse country like ours.

Euthanasia, Abortion, Death Penalty and Religion - The Right to Life and its Limitations

Euthanasia, Abortion, Death Penalty and Religion - The Right to Life and its Limitations
Author: Hans-Georg Ziebertz
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2018-11-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3319987739

This book considers how the termination of life might be accepted in the view of a general obligation to protect life. It features more than 10 papers written by scholars from 14 countries that offer international comparative empirical research. Inside, readers will find case studies from such areas as: India, Chile, Germany, Italy, England, Palestine, Lithuania, Nigeria, and Poland. The papers focus on three limitations of the right to life: the death penalty, abortion, and euthanasia. The contributors explore how young people understand and evaluate the right to life and its limitations. The book presents unique empirical research among today's youth and reveals that, among other concepts, religiosity matters. It provides insight into the acceptance, perception, and legitimation of human rights by people from different religious and cultural backgrounds. This investigation rigorously tests for inter-individual differences regarding political and judicial rights on religious grounds, while controlling for other characteristics. It will help readers better understand the many facets of this fundamental, yet controversial, philosophical question. The volume will be of interest to students, researchers, as well as general readers searching for answers.

Regulating the End of Life

Regulating the End of Life
Author: Sue Westwood
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1000439496

Regulating the End of Life: Death Rights is a collection of cutting-edge chapters on assisted dying and euthanasia, written by leading authors in the field. Providing an overview of current regulation on assisted dying and euthanasia, both in the UK and internationally, this book also addresses the associated debates on ethical, moral, and rights issues. It considers whether, just as there is a right to life, there should also be a right to death, especially in the context of unbearable human suffering. The unintended consequences of prohibitions on assisted dying and euthanasia are explored, and the argument put forward that knowing one can choose when and how one dies can be life-extending, rather than life-limiting. Key critiques from feminist and disability studies are addressed. The overarching theme of the collection is that death is an embodied right which we should be entitled to exercise, with appropriate safeguards, as and when we choose. Making a novel contribution to the debate on assisted dying, this interdisciplinary book will appeal to those with relevant interests in law, socio-legal studies, applied ethics, medical ethics, politics, philosophy, and sociology.

Policing Life and Death

Policing Life and Death
Author: Marisol LeBrón
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2019-04-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520300173

In her exciting new book, Marisol LeBrón traces the rise of punitive governance in Puerto Rico over the course of the twentieth century and up to the present. Punitive governance emerged as a way for the Puerto Rican state to manage the deep and ongoing crises stemming from the archipelago’s incorporation into the United States as a colonial territory. A structuring component of everyday life for many Puerto Ricans, police power has reinforced social inequality and worsened conditions of vulnerability in marginalized communities. This book provides powerful examples of how Puerto Ricans negotiate and resist their subjection to increased levels of segregation, criminalization, discrimination, and harm. Policing Life and Death shows how Puerto Ricans are actively rejecting punitive solutions and working toward alternative understandings of safety and a more just future.

Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths

Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths
Author: Shimon Edelman
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2022-06-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0262542781

A guide for making sense of life--from action (good except when it's not) to thinking (depressing) to youth (a treasure). This book offers a guide to human nature and human experience--a reference book for making sense of life. In thirty-eight short, interconnected essays, Shimon Edelman considers the parameters of the human condition, addressing them in alphabetical order, from action (good except when it's not) to love (only makes sense to the lovers) to thinking (should not be so depressing) to youth (a treasure). In a style that is by turns personal and philosophical, at once informative and entertaining, Edelman offers a series of illuminating takes on the most important aspects of living in the world.

Life and Death in Rikers Island

Life and Death in Rikers Island
Author: Homer Venters
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1421427354

Shining a light on the deadly health consequences of incarceration. Finalist in the PROSE Award for Best Book in Anthropology, Criminology, and Sociology by the Association of American Publishers Kalief Browder was 16 when he was arrested in the Bronx for allegedly stealing a backpack. Unable to raise bail and unwilling to plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit, Browder spent three years in New York's infamous Rikers Island jail—two in solitary confinement—while awaiting trial. After his case was dismissed in 2013, Browder returned to his family, haunted by his ordeal. Suffering through the lonely hell of solitary, Browder had been violently attacked by fellow prisoners and corrections officers throughout his incarceration. Consumed with depression, Browder committed suicide in 2015. He was just 22 years old. In Life and Death in Rikers Island, Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer for New York City's jails, explains the profound health risks associated with incarceration. From neglect and sexual abuse to blocked access to care and exposure to brutality, Venters details how jails are designed and run to create new health risks for prisoners—all while forcing doctors and nurses into complicity or silence. Pairing prisoner experiences with cutting-edge research into prison risk, Venters reveals the disproportionate extent to which the health risks of jail are meted out to those with behavioral health problems and people of color. He also presents compelling data on alternative strategies that can reduce health risks. This revelatory and groundbreaking book concludes with the author's analysis of the case for closing Rikers Island jails and his advice on how to do it for the good of the incarcerated.

The Right to Life Under International Law

The Right to Life Under International Law
Author: Stuart Casey-Maslen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 795
Release: 2021-09-23
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108494781

Offers the first-ever comprehensive treatment under international law of the foundational human right to life.

Right Here, Right Now

Right Here, Right Now
Author: Lynden Harris
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2021-03-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 147802142X

Upon receiving his execution date, one of the thousands of men living on death row in the United States had an epiphany: “All there ever is, is this moment. You, me, all of us, right here, right now, this minute, that's love.” Right Here, Right Now collects the powerful, first-person stories of dozens of men on death rows across the country. From childhood experiences living with poverty, hunger, and violence to mental illness and police misconduct to coming to terms with their executions, these men outline their struggle to maintain their connection to society and sustain the humanity that incarceration and its daily insults attempt to extinguish. By offering their hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, failures, and wounds, the men challenge us to reconsider whether our current justice system offers actual justice or simply perpetuates the social injustices that obscure our shared humanity.

Culture of Death

Culture of Death
Author: Wesley J. Smith
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2016-05-17
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1594038562

When his teenage son Christopher, brain-damaged in an auto accident, developed a 105-degree fever following weeks of unconsciousness, John Campbell asked the attending physician for help. The doctor refused. Why bother? The boy’s life was effectively over. Campbell refused to accept this verdict. He demanded treatment and threatened legal action. The doctor finally relented. With treatment, Christopher’s temperature—which had eventually reached 107.6 degrees—subsided almost immediately. Soon afterward the boy regained consciousness and was learning to walk again. This story is one of many Wesley J. Smith recounts in his award-winning classic critique of the modern bioethics movement, Culture of Death. In this newly updated edition, Smith chronicles how the threats to the equality of human life have accelerated in recent years, from the proliferation of euthanasia and the Brittany Maynard assisted suicide firestorm, to the potential for “death panels” posed by Obamacare and the explosive Terri Schiavo controversy. Culture of Death reveals how more and more doctors have withdrawn from the Hippocratic Oath and how “bioethicists” influence policy by posing questions such as whether organs may be harvested from the terminally ill and disabled. This is a passionate yet coolly reasoned book about the current crisis in medical ethics by an author who has made “the new thanatology” his consuming interest.