Free to Do No Harm: Conscience Protections for Healthcare Professionals

2017, Past Issues, Print, Volume 49 (2017) Issue 2 (Summer)
Kevin H. Theriot & Ken Connelly. The right to conscience of medical practitioners and related healthcare professionals has come under increasing attack in recent years. Examples abound of individuals and institutions being compelled to act against their will and their beliefs. Yet despite this unfortunate reality, it is difficult to conceive of a scenario in which the right to conscience for medical practitioners should not prevail in a conflict with some other claimed imperative, especially given its historical and philosophical pedigree. Full Article
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No One Knew What to Expect: Breaking the Phoenix Gender Barrier in 1969

2017, Past Issues, Print, Volume 49 (2017) Issue 2 (Summer)
The Honorable Mary M. Schroeder. 1968 was not a good year for the world, for the United States, or for my husband, Milt, and me. The Vietnam War and public reactions to it were going so badly that in March, President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not stand for re-election in the fall. In April, Martin Luther King was gunned down in Memphis, sparking nation-wide riots including unrest in our Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington, D.C. The ruckus drove Milt and me out of our little house at 8½ E Street Southeast and into the Virginia countryside while military units descended on Washington to keep order. Things became even worse when, in June, our great hope for the future, Bobby Kennedy, was shot in Los Angeles in a hotel kitchen,…
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Safeguarding the Right to Try

2017, Past Issues, Print, Volume 49 (2017) Issue 2 (Summer)
Christina Sandefur. When Jenn McNary’s son Austin was three and her son Max was just a newborn, both boys were diagnosed with Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy— an incurable, fatal, degenerative muscle disorder. By the time Jenn learned of a promising treatment undergoing testing in clinical trials, Austin had declined so badly that he was restricted to a wheelchair. Jenn immediately tried to enroll both boys in the trial—only to learn that the trial was limited to ambulatory patients. That meant Max was eligible, but Austin’s disease had progressed too far to qualify. Jenn was forced to watch while one son’s condition improved significantly under treatment, and her other son’s condition worsened until he could no longer dress or use the restroom without help. Thirteen-year-old Max became sixteen-year-old Austin’s caregiver. The United…
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An End to Preemptively Limiting the Scope of a Manufacturer’s Duty: Why the Arizona Court of Appeals Was Right in Striking Down the Learned Intermediary Doctrine

2017, Past Issues, Print, Volume 49 (2017) Issue 2 (Summer)
Matt O'Connor. On January 29, 2015, the Arizona Court of Appeals rejected one of the most contentious tort doctrines in modern U.S. history. Amanda Watts began taking the drug Solodyn for acne treatment when she was a minor, as prescribed by her physician. After long-term use of Solodyn, she developed drug-induced hepatitis and drug-induced lupus, and now “she may suffer from lupus for the rest of her life.” She brought suit against the drug manufacturer, Medicis, for consumer fraud, product liability, and punitive damages. Although Amanda suffered obvious side effects as a result of taking Solodyn, the trial court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss based on the learned intermediary doctrine (“the doctrine”). This tort liability doctrine can be traced back to 1925. It provides that “a manufacturer is not…
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Unclouding Arizona’s Water Future

2017, Past Issues, Print, Volume 49 (2017) Issue 2 (Summer)
Rhett Larson & Brian Payne. A cloud hangs over the future of Arizona’s water. The cloud has hung low and heavy for over forty years. The cloud is the ongoing adjudication of water rights in Arizona’s courts, where the priority, amount, and use of virtually all non-Colorado River water in Arizona remain in dispute. Arizona’s general stream adjudications cost the state, cities, towns, farms, mines, businesses, and citizens millions of dollars each year in legal costs. Those costs pale in comparison to the uncertainty that obscures Arizona’s water future because the cases remain undecided. The last time such a cloud hung over Arizona’s water future, the state enacted one of the most influential and innovative pieces of water law seen in world in last century—the Arizona Groundwater Management Act (GMA).…
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Pushing for Change: The State of Arizona Should Allow Women Greater Access to Midwifery Care

2017, Past Issues, Print, Volume 49 (2017) Issue 2 (Summer)
Leia Dingott. The evidence in support of homebirths continues to pile up, and yet many states, including Arizona, continue to be influenced by the powerful lobby rather than by the facts and interests of the primary stakeholders, mothers, and babies. Maternal health in the United States is in a state of crisis with 437 woman dying annually (13 deaths per 100,000 births) from childbirth or complications from childbirth. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that half of these deaths are preventable. Recently, there has been a grassroots movement among woman to find direct entry midwives and birth at home. But there has been push-back from the medical community and state legislatures. The medical community claims that hospitals are the safest place to give birth, yet these numbers come from hospital…
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Economic Liberty and the Arizona Constitution: A Survey of Forgotten History

2017, Past Issues, Print, Volume 49 (2017) Issue 2 (Summer)
Paul Avelar & Keith Diggs. Justice Brennan’s exhortation—now forty years old—for lawyers and judges to rediscover protections for individual rights in state constitutions was a timely reminder of the importance of state constitutions in our system of federalism. Justice Brennan issued this call at a time when he believed the U.S. Supreme Court was retreating from the protection of individual rights under the U.S. Constitution. It is doubtful that Justice Brennan meant to include economic liberty—the right to earn a living free from oppressive government regulation—in his “new federalism.” But economic liberty is a nearly textbook example of an individual right that the U.S. Supreme Court had once vigorously protected but had retreated from by the late 1970s. The pattern of meaningful protection for economic liberty fading into nonprotection was…
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A Look Back: The Spring 1983 Issue of the Arizona State University Law Forum

2017, Past Issues, Print, Volume 49 (2017) Issue 2 (Summer)
Arizona State Law Journal Executive Editorial Board. To celebrate the law school’s fiftieth anniversary, we want to look back and appreciate the people and events from the last half century that have contributed to the school’s development. It is particularly significant to look back at the individuals who created the law school from the ground up. These founders of Arizona State University Law first recognized and appreciated the contributions that a law school brings to the community, and then committed themselves to turn their ideas into what is now the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.  Full Article
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