Extracts and compounds of natural products have potential as alternatives to current Western medicines. However, these products may not be patentable under the statutory requirements because of their naturally-occurring nature. This article analyzes the current patenting practices for natural products in the United States, particularly in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling in Myriad, and ...

There are many views on how human decision makers behave. In this work, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court will be viewed in terms of constrained maximization and cognitivecybernetic theory. This paper will integrate research in such fields as law, political science, psychology, economics and decision making theory. It will be argued that due to its heavy workload, the Supreme Cour...

Despite the promises made after World War II to eliminate the commission of atrocities, crimes against humanity persist with horrifying ubiquity. Yet the absence of a consistent definition and uniform interpretation of crimes against humanity has made it difficult to establish the theory underlying such crimes and to prosecute them in particular cases. In the 1990s, several ad hoc international...

12 This year marks the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that provided constitutional protection for abortion. In its 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court recognized a woman’s constitutional right to decide, in consultation with her physician, whether to terminate a pregnancy. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the implementation of the Hyde Amendment,...

This essay expands the empirical analysis of overruled Supreme Court decisions by focusing on citation network centrality measures and comparative depreciation analysis to compare overruled decisions to matched peers. We demonstrate that those decisions which go on to be overruled tend to occupy more central citation network positions, cite more central cases, and depreciate at a slower rate th...

BACKGROUND The Western Cape Forum for Intellectual Disability took the South African Government to court in 2010 on its failure to implement the right to education for Children with Severe and Profound Intellectual Disability. Subsequently, multidisciplinary teams were appointed by the Western Cape Education Department to deliver services to the Special Care Centres (SCCs). Initially, minimal i...

This commentary on Salem et al. provides background for their study by reviewing Washington v. Harper and outlining some areas that were not addressed by that decision. It contrasts Harper holdings with those in other U. S. Supreme Court decisions in parallel cases and in United States v. Loughner. It provides cautions about extensions of some holdings in Loughner regarding the use of Harper-ty...

This issue of Annals sheds light on patient and clinician decisions and their implications. Hendriksen and colleagues compare family physicians’ gestalt (estimated probability) of pulmonary embolism compared to the Wells decision rule among patients referred for testing. Gestalt performs surprisingly well. The Wells rule is more specific, and almost as sensitive as physicians’ gestalt, making i...