Painting constitutional law

Sample

Tibor Machan

A serious confusion exists over government's proper role in society. Whatever is considered important has been presumed to be a "public" or government concern. But, what are the proper limits to this "public" sphere? Should government be limited to protecting individual rights, including the right to private property, under a Rule of Law applied uniformly throughout society? Many sincere and intelligent people answer in the negative and propose a broad scope for government, including the regulation of advertising, firearms ownership, drug use, teenage pregnancy, environment, health care, tobacco and alcohol consumption, AIDS research, employment, education, etc. Private Rights and Public Illusions reveals that few problems concern most members of society in any uniform way, and contrary to conventional belief, both "public" and "private" realms are driven by the self-interests of those involved. Social problems have not only persisted despite massive government programs; such bureaucracies have produced even greater problems, undercut the private solutions of civil society, and given license to some individuals to misuse power over others. The erroneous conception of "public" affairs forms the basis for the intrusiveness of government into the peaceful lives of people. Private Rights and Public Illusions clearly charts what the "public" realms should be, not only to redefine government's proper purview and distinguish it from the private realm, but to protect the productivity, spontaneity, and civility uniquely present in private human life.

Sample

Diana B. Petitti

"Meta-analysis, decision analysis, and cost-effectiveness analysis are the cornerstones of evidence-based medicine. These related quantitative methods have become essential tools in the formulation of clinical and public policy based on the synthesis of evidence. All three methods are taught with increasing frequency in medical schools and schools of. Public health and in health policy courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. This book is a lucid introduction and will serve the needs of students taking introductory courses that cover these topics. It will also be useful to clinicians and policy-makers who need to understand the quantitative underpinnings of the methods in order to best apply the information that derives from them."--Jacket.

Sample

Michael L. Perlin

"The issue of the human rights of people with mental disabilities has been ignored for decades by the international agencies vested with the protection of human rights on a global scale. It is only within the past several years that society has begun to understand that violations of persons' mental disability rights are violations of human rights. This is the first and only casebook that considers the intersection between international human rights law and comparative mental disability law; it provides a systematic investigation of all of the relevant issues. Topics covered include a comparison of civil and common law systems, an overview of international human rights law, an overview of regional human rights tribunals, an overview of U.S. constitutional mental disability law, mental disability law in an international human rights context, comparative mental disability law (civil and common, scholarly articles and case law), the use of institutional psychiatry as a means of suppressing political dissension, the "universal factors" in this area of law, and the globalization of disability law."--Publisher's website.

Sample

Robert M. Veatch

Robert Veatch, one of the founding fathers of contemporary bioethics, sheds light on a fundamental change sweeping through the American health care system, a change that puts the patient in charge of treatment to an unprecedented extent. The change is in how we think about medical decision-making. Whereas medicine's core idea was that medical decisions should be based on the hard facts of science--the province of the doctor--the "new medicine" contends that medical decisions impose value judgments. Since physicians are not trained to make value judgments, the pendulum has swung greatly toward the patient in making decisions about their treatment. Veatch shows how this has been true only for value-loaded interventions (abortion, euthanasia, genetics) but is coming to be true for almost every routine procedure in medicine, and uses a range of examples to argue that this change is inevitable and a positive trend for patients.--From publisher description.