Jane F. Adolphe & Ronald J. Rychlak. Clerical Sexual Misconduct: An Interdisciplinary Analysis, Cluny Media, (2020)
In 2018, as accounts of clerical sexual misconduct in Chile, Honduras, and the United States roiled the Catholic Church, an international meeting of experts in journalism, law, pastoral care, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology, was convened to study the incidence of clerical sexual abuse of males. Under the skilled editorship of Jane F. Adolphe and Ronald J. Rychlak, Clerical Sexual Misconduct: An Interdisciplinary Analysis is the result of that meeting and the incisive, insightful studies which it generated.
Sarah Baulac, In the Business of Medicine: Why Hospitals Should Be Subject to the Theory of Strict Liability As Any Other Seller, 20 Ave Maria L. Rev. 192 (2022)
Hospitals have routinely escaped strict liability for defective implanted medical devices, and it is no longer prudent for courts to allow hospitals to hide behind the “essence”182 of the transaction between patient and hospital. Plainly, modern hospitals are sellers of implantable medical devices and not solely service providers.
The market for implanted medical devices has grown exponentially as more Americans are being fit with such devices.183 As the demand for implantable medical devices increases, hospitals have reaped the benefits as *215 sellers. Hospitals, profitable even as non-profits,184 are tweaking their operating models to best leverage implantable medical devices as profit centers. Because hospitals are taking a more active role in selecting implantable medical devices and inflating the price of devices as they see fit, the law should see fit to hold them strictly liable for defective devices as any other entity in the business of selling who introduces the risk to the public. Ultimately, the policy concerns that courts cite to are refutable and, in fact, these “concerns” are not really concerns at all, but rather incentives for hospitals to get serious about devices that are safe for patients.
As the court said in Cunningham, one of the biggest businesses in the country should bear the costs of distributing a product for consumption.185 The time has come to treat hospitals as the profit-turning businesses that they are and impose strict products liability appropriately.
J. Kirkland Miller and Maureen M. Milliron, Ownership of Property and Adverse Possession from the Catholic Perspective: You've Got to Have (Good) Faith!, 20 Ave Maria L. Rev. 125 (2022)
Arguments in favor of requiring the bad faith adverse possessor to compensate the dispossessed title holder for land knowingly taken have been recommended by several scholars over the years; 176however, none have addressed this issue from the Catholic perspective. Requiring good faith, or, in cases of bad faith, that the knowing trespasser pay for the land, underscores the sense of right and conscience that underpins the natural law and is written on the heart of every man. For "right and justice [are] ultimately . . . laws of the moral world order which flow from the qualities of God, which make themselves known as such by the organ of conscience . . . as the will of God and as a power which transcends the human being." 177
Nadia N. Sawicki, The Conscience Defense to Malpractice, 108 Calif. L. Rev. 1255 (2020)
This Article presents the first comprehensive overview of the procedural protections established by state conscience laws in the reproductive health care context. The novel research findings in this Article raise awareness of the previously unrecognized breadth of protections established by conscience laws. These findings also challenge the assumption that tort law is available to remedy harms suffered by patients who are injured by a conscience-based denial of information or treatment, even when that denial violates the standard of care. Although the scope of this study was limited to conscience laws relating to reproductive care, it prompts further academic inquiry and debate about the appropriate scope of conscience protections in all health care contexts. The data and discussion in this Article should motivate policy-makers to consider how best to balance providers' rights of conscience against the state's interest in ensuring that patients, employers, and others who suffer harm as a result of a provider's exercise of conscience rights are not denied legal remedies for those harms.
