In the first of several articles on refusal of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in this issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, an American ethicist refutes the contention that it is morally appropriate to respect the irrational decision of a competent, depressed patient to refuse ECT. He argues that, when the likelihood of benefit is great and the only alternative is prolonged suffering, the p...

the iranian civil code is mostly influenced by juristic sources and french law. in the article 1234 of french civil code, a legal institution entitled “terminator condition” is included in the causes of discharge of an obligation. the article 264 of iranian civil code, which deals with description of causes of discharge of an obligation, corresponds to the article 1234 of french civil law. howe...

this article is concerned with the question of how much the assured will be entitled to recover following an assured loss. it will be discussed which three elements are involved in this respect; first the loss of assured, second the amount of assuror obligation and third the contractual agreements of the parties in respect of the amount of assuror's payment.it should be noted that franchis...

Deontic logic is appropriate to model a wide variety of legal arguments, however this logic suffers form certain paradoxes of which the so-called Chisholm is one of the most notorious. We propose a formalisation of the Chisholm set in the framework of the situation calculus. We utilise this alternative to modal logic for formalising the obligations of the agent and avoiding the Chisholm paradox...

With the ubiquitous deployment of large scale networks, more and more complex human interactions are supported by computer applications. This poses new challenges on the expressiveness of security policy design systems, often requiring the use of new security paradigms. In this paper we identify a restricted type of obligation which is useful to express new security policies. This type of oblig...

NOTE: © Blackwell Publishing and the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics. This version is not definitive. It has been posted with permission and is not for citation or further distribution. The definitive version is P.B. Miller & C. Weijer, “Fiduciary Obligation in Clinical Research,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 2006; 34(2): 424-440. It is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com o...

“Extensive publicity before trial does not, in itself, preclude fairness. In many respects media exposure presents problems not qualitatively different from that experienced in earlier times in small communities where gossip and jurors’ personal acquaintances with lawyers, witnesses, and even the accused were not uncommon. Properly motivated and carefully instructed jurors can and have exercise...