Less than two years later, on March 18, 2005, Terri's feeding tube was removed for the last time. 4 Thirteen days later on March 31, 2005, she died.5 Ironically, what began as personal decision evolved into a test of not only the Florida Constitution, but also a check on our structure of governmental powers. In the end, the fate of Terri Schiavo, a shy person who hated the spotlight, polarized ...

In Davis v. Davis (1992), the Supreme Court of Tennessee decided a dispute over cryopreserved preembryos in favor of Junior Lewis Davis, who sought to have the preembryos destroyed over the objections of his former wife, Mary Sue Davis. The decision in Davis, although not binding in other states, suggested a framework for resolving similar disputes in the US. That framework established that cou...

How do disagreements between judges on collegial (multimember) courts affect legal policy? We address this question by developing an account of the nature of judicial disagreements in the case-space model of judicial choice. We distinguish between different types of disagreement, from disagreements about case facts to disagreements about how legal rules should treat varying case facts, and cons...

Antitrust law provides that successful private plaintiffs are entitled to treble damages. Despite this, in antitrust class action litigation, courts have subtly dismantled the treble damage regime by manipulating the standard for reviewing proposed settlements. Federal law requires judicial approval of class action settlements in order to ensure that the class members’ interests are adequately ...

The rapid spread of the precautionary principle (PP) demonstrates the need to explicitly address the role of precaution in environmental decision making. Unfortunately, the PP in its current form is limited by the vagueness of, and variations in, the many formulations of the PP. This ambiguity in the meaning of the PP would not be so serious if the PP were limited to a general aspirational poli...

Montgomery v Lanarkshire HB is a deeply troubling decision when read closely. Paradoxically, its ruling supporting the principle of autonomy could be justified only by disregarding the individual patient's actual choices and characteristics in favour of a stereotype. The decision demonstrates a lack of expertise in dealing with specific clinical issues and misrepresents professional guidance. M...

A significant majority of the world’s constitutional courts publicize their decisions through direct contact with the national media. This interest in public information is puzzling in so far as constitutional judges are not directly accountable to voters. I argue that the promotion of case results is consistent with a theory of judicial behavior in which public support for courts can undermine...

As one can tell from the articles prepared for this Symposium, the litigation concerning Terri’s Law and that more broadly dealing with Theresa Marie Schiavo’s “right to die” has many implications. Other participants have discussed the ways in which this epic litigation saga implicates the proper interpretation of the Florida Constitution,1 advance directives,2 and how the litigation fits into ...

“Which test provides the better measurement of intelligence, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III) or the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV)?” is an important question to professional psychologists; however, it has become a critical issue in Atkins cases wherein courts are often presented with divergent Full-Scale IQ (FSIQ) scores on the WAIS-III...