THE LAW OF DEATH AND DYING

FALL 2002

KATHLEEN M. BOOZANG

THE LAW OF DEATH AND DYING

Grade

Your grade in this seminar will have two components:

a) 20% will be based upon class preparation and participation

b) 80% will be based upon either a take-home examination or a paper, at your election.  You must notify me of your choice by 9/9/02.

If you elect to write a paper, please be advised that your paper grade will be reduced by 1/3 of a letter for every week that either the first draft or the final paper is submitted subsequent to the applicable due date.  In my sole discretion, I may grant exceptions to this policy for extreme circumstances such as a family death.

Take-home examination

The take-home exam will be blind-graded.

Students' examination answers must consist solely of their own work.  You may not discuss the exam, the course or the class materials with attorneys, other students, friends, significant others, etc. while you or others in the class still have the exam in your or their possession, or they have not yet picked it up.

Paper Requirements

If you have not conducted research in some number of months, I encourage you to attend LEXIS/WESTLAW training classes.  If you do not know how to do research on the internet, I encourage you to attend a class to learn.  And finally, books still exist, and can sometimes even be helpful.

Paper Deadlines

The following deadlines apply to those writing papers:

9/9/02 Irrevocable Election of Take-home or Examination

9/23/02 Paper topic due.

At the time you submit your paper topic, you must also provide to me:

(1) one type-written page describing your paper topic, the areas you have already researched, what additional research you plan to do, and what you think your thesis might be; and

(2)  a description of all written projects on which you have previously worked, in higher education or during the course of employment, which are related to the proposed topic.

10/7/02 Outline or 4-5 page abstract describing the topic and research findings and conclusions.

11/4/02 First Draft Due

12/2/02 Final Draft Due:  You must submit all prior drafts reviewed by me with the final draft.

The above deadlines are minimum requirements for the seminar.  You are welcome to submit multiple drafts or to provide your outline and draft earlier than required.

Please be mindful that the Honor Code applies to paper preparation.

The papers must be of student publishable quality (ie of similar quality to a law review Note or Comment), at least 25 pages in length, and conform to the latest edition of the Blue Book.  Papers must evidence substantial independent research, beyond that included in class handouts or suggested in the syllabus below.  For most topics in this seminar, I would expect interdisciplinary research, both manual and computer-based.  The internet is a wonderful research source, but in no circumstances should it be your sole source of information.

You must use Spell-Check, Gramatik, Auto-Cite or Shep before submitting any written product to me.  I will return (without reading) papers that upon first glance appear not to satisfy these requirements.  You will then have 24 hours to return the paper to me; I retain the right to reduce the grade for a returned paper by 1/3 letter grade.

Although I grade papers on quality rather than length, I would expect that seminar papers be at least 25 pages in length.

My determination of your grade and my certification that the paper fulfills the ALWR are separate and independent decisions.  Thus, hypothetically, you could receive a passing grade for your seminar paper but not receive certification of having fulfilled the ALWR.

Resource for Guidance about Scholarly Writing

The Law School has established a web page that sets out the requirements for an AWR, gives great detail about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it, and provides sample topics and papers.  I expect every student who is writing a paper for this class to thoroughly review the materials posted on this web page:

http://law.shu.edu/administration/registrar_bursar/advanced_writing_requirement/index.htm

Themes for the Semester

1.  For two decades, courts and legislatures have struggled to develop a system for end-of-life decision-making that effectuates patient autonomy without risking patient abuse by family members.  Assessment of the clinical setting in 1998 raises serious questions about the success of the law in establishing a system that works in the clinical setting.  What solutions, if any, exist?

2. Has the concept of patient autonomy been taken too far:

Patients and their families are demanding treatment that physicians claim is "futile";  a waste of scare resources; and a violation of physicians' right to exercise their professional autonomy.  Medicine and ethics are split over the question, and the law has yet to directly confront the competing perspectives.  Once confronted, how should the law respond?

Patients are suddenly clamoring for access to assistance from medical professionals in ending life.  Why, and is it something that society should countenance?  Is medicine failing patients in some way, or have patients come to expect too much from medicine.

3.  Do we care for the chronically ill, disabled, aging and dying appropriately?  Will managed care further exacerbate the problems of caring for the chronically and terminally ill? 

Syllabus

8/26/02 I. Introduction: The Death of Nancy Cruzan

9/9/02 II.  Brain Death

9/23/02 III.  Persistent Vegetative State

IV.  Right To Die

9/30/02  A) State and U.S. Supreme Court Jurisprudence

10/7/02  B) Federal and State Statutory Approaches

10/14/02V.  SUPPORT and other studies about end-of-life decision-making

10/21/02VI.  Wrongful Living: A Solution to the Disappointments of the Medical System?

10/28/02VII.  Application of the end-of-life treatment paradigm to decision-making by the chronically Ill/disabled

11/4/02 VIII.  Caring for severely disabled children at the beginning of life

11/11/02 IX.  The Medical Futility Debate

11/18/02 X.  Physician Assisted Suicide

11/25/02 XI.  Have we failed to appropriately care for the dying: 

Pain Management

11/27/02 XII.  Ethics Committees      

Potential Paper Topics

Termination of treatment for Critically Ill Newborns

Organ Donation

Research Involving the Terminally Ill

Is there/should there be a cause of action for inadequate pain management?

The Relationship of Race, Socio-economic or Insurance Status, and Ethnicity to End-of-Life Treatment Decision-Making--Does a legal remedy exist?

Advance Directives and End-of-Life Decision-Making by the Cognitively Impaired

Advance Directives by Children

Should the law care about the impact of death on family members?

Should the law allow surrogate decision-makers to consider the cost of care?

Xenotransplantation