I was piling the food from my grocery cart onto the cashier?s conveyor when the headline caught my eye; one of the tabloids next to the checkout announced ?Now It Can Be Told: Saddaam and Osama?s Gay Wedding!? Beneath the headline was a ?photograph? of Saddaam Hussain in a suit, walking down the aisle with Osama Bin Ladin, tastefully attired in a long, white bridal gown.
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Using Restraints: The Legal Context of High Risk Interventions
The treatment of children by mental health professionals–particularly in an institutional setting–implicates three sets of important, and frequently competing, interests.
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Religious Paradigms and the Rule of Law: Thinking in Red and Blue
While lawyers, political scientists and others recognize the more explicitly religious components of America?s current polarization, we fail to appreciate the extent to which conflicting policy preferences are rooted in religiously-shaped normative frameworks. Much like the blind men and the elephant, we encounter different parts of the animal. We see a tree, a wall, a snake?but we fail to apprehend the size, shape and power of the whole elephant.
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Flip-Flopping Along
A consistent adherence to one’s values–a demonstrated pattern of acting in accordance with core beliefs–is a highly regarded indicator of character, as it should be. But what does genuine consistency look like? If Emerson was right, and "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," how do we tell the difference between someone who has no strong beliefs and someone who is "foolishly consistent?"someone who doesn’t understand why principles may apply differently under different sets of facts?
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Legal Aspects of High Risk Interventions
As Kennedy and Mohr have noted (2001), the treatment of children by mental health professionals?particularly in an institutional setting?implicates three sets of important, and frequently competing, interests. The first of these is the parental interest in preserving family autonomy: minimizing state interference in decisions made about what constitutes the best interests of their children, and their right to transmit to those children their particular personal and cultural values. The second is the state?s interest in protecting the child, preventing or controlling antisocial behavior, and, in furtherance of those goals, providing a system of mental-health care. Finally, there are the child?s own interests in ?being cared for, loved, and helped to become an autonomous individual with the rights and privileges of an adult? (Hopcroft, 1995).
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