This thesis is about so-­‐called consensual exploitative transactions: transactions to which all parties agree voluntarily, and which are beneficial for all parties, but which are still widely considered exploitative, and for that reason legally restricted in many countries. The thesis asks two main questions: 1. What is wrong with consensual exploitation? 2.What implications does the answer to this question have for the legal restriction of consensual transactions that are regarded exploitative in modern liberal societies? In answer to the first research question, the thesis starts by distinguishing and analysing five competing views of the wrong in consensual exploitation that exist in the present-­‐day philosophical debate on exploitation; and rejects all five answers. Next, the thesis offers an alternative answer, which is that the wrong in consensual exploitation can best be understood as a matter of greediness—a failure of the virtue of generosity. The thesis then turns to the second research question: what understanding exploitation as greediness implies for the legal restriction of exploitative transactions. It discusses and rejects the view that law ought only to be used to regulate ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behaviour, and not to promote virtues or discourage vices, such as generosity and greediness. The thesis argues that legal restrictions on consensual exploitative transactions can be justified as a means to prevent greediness, and to promote a certain other-­‐regardingness, and illustrates this argument with two examples of laws that regulate consensual transactions which are widely regarded exploitative: minimum wage laws and payday loan laws.

published_or_final_version / Community Medicine / Master / Master of Public Health

For an investment treaty tribunal to proceed to adjudge the merits of claims arising out of an investment, it must have jurisdiction over the parties and the claims, and the claims submitted to the tribunal must be admissible. Inconsistent interpretations of substantive and procedural principles of international investment law that govern the existence and exercise of the arbitral tribunal’s supremacy to adjudge an investment dispute have caused incoherence in investment treaty arbitration. The thesis is an in-depth study of article 25 of the 1965 Washington Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which articulates the Material, Personal and Consensual requirements for establishing the existence of the adjudicative power (Jurisdiction) for dispute resolution and to exercise that adjudicative power (Admissibility) under the aegis of ICSID. The main findings of the research are as follows: 1) ICSID’s double-filtering nature, which has been largely overlooked in ICSID jurisprudence, is fundamental to correct decision-making by arbitral tribunals when deciding on admissibility and jurisdiction issues. 2) ‘Fraudulent intent’ criterion, which borrows its rationale from the concurrent themes in international law jurisprudence, is instrumental to test compliance as required in the upper jurisdictional threshold. 3) ‘Bona fide investor’ test used to measure compliance with the objective requirements of article 25 of the ICSID runs counter to the object and purpose of the Convention. 4) ‘Dynamic’ test, rather than plain ‘objective’ test, would be the adequate pattern to ensure compliance with article 25 of the ICSID Convention for the contemplated investment due to evolving meaning of such generic term. 5) ‘Lex Juridictio’ or set of rules, principals and mechanisms governing jurisdictional and admissibility issues is required as foundation for legal unification and harmonization.

Purpose: To determine which method of anesthesia risk presentation parents understand and prefer across their demographic variables Methods: As a cross-sectional study, questionnaires were distributed to 50 parents of patients (<7 years of age) in the VCU Pediatric Dental Clinic. Parents were asked of their own and their children’s demographics, previous dental and anesthesia experiences, and anesthesia understanding. Parents were then asked to rate the level of risk of several risk presentations and finally asked which method of risk presentation they most understood or preferred. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients, likelihood chi square tests, and repeated measures logistic regression. Results: There was no evidence of a differential preference due to gender (P = 0.28), age (P > .9), education (P = 0.39) or whether they incorrectly answered any risk question (P > 0.7). There was some evidence that the three types were not equally preferred (likelihood ratio chi- square = 5.31, df =2, P-value = 0.0703). The best estimate is that 60% prefer charts, 34% prefer numbers, and 36% prefer activity comparisons. There was a relationship between the average relative risk of general anesthesia and age (r = –0.38, P = 0.0070). Younger individuals indicate High risk more often and older individuals indicate Low risk more often. Conclusion: There was no preference of risk presentation type due to gender, age, or education, but there was evidence that each was not equally preferred. Healthcare providers must be able to present the risk of anesthesia in multiple ways to allow for full patient understanding.

The discipline of orthopaedic surgery is a fast growing surgical specialty directed at the diagnosis and management of disorders of the musculoskeletal system e.g. acute trauma, fractured or dislocated joints, elective reconstructive surgery as well as related research. The standard of care in orthopaedic surgery treatment reflects the status of its evolution and what is currently available in terms of the knowledge, surgical expertise, orthopaedic implant materials, and equipment. It is the duty of the orthopaedic surgeon to live up to the promise as best he or she can to heal when it is possible to heal and to provide the level of care expected that transcends simple surgical expertise and bio-technological intervention. The informed consent process is an often neglected but vital component of the standard of care which has to satisfy prescribed ethical and legal requirements. This research is focused on how to heighten the awareness of, and to encourage engagement within the orthopaedic surgery fraternity with the informed consent process. If the informed consent is given more recognition within this group, it will benefit the potentially vulnerable orthopaedic patient, protect the orthopaedic surgeon against litigation, and importantly, contribute to the ethical imperatives bound in a doctor-patient relationship. For this research, a vast search of the available local and international literature has been perused and my finding is that the application of Ethics and recognition of the informed consent concept within the medical community in general is gathering momentum and it must be both supported and internalized by those in orthopaedic surgical practice.

Informed consent is one of the most discussed issues of medical law. This thesis tries to contribute to the discussion through a comparative study between Czech law and Canadian law (the common law part of Canadian law), focusing on the basic components of the subject matter. The thesis is divided into six parts. The first one deals with information disclosure and consent to treatment in the paternalistic model and the participatory model of a doctor-patient relationship. The second part provides an overview of relevant Czech and Canadian legal sources and also of key milestones in the development of informed consent in both countries. The third part of the thesis discusses the concept of informed consent. The fourth part is focused on the disclosure - its content and scope, form and other related aspects. The fifth part of the thesis deals with the consent itself - its elements, the withdrawal of consent and the refusal to give consent. Finally, the sixth part deals with the specifics of minors. With regard to the basic features of informed consent, it can be clearly stated that the compared legal systems are fundamentally the same. Differences can be seen only when analysing the subject matter into very great detail and those differences are usually various technicalities (e.g. determination of...

Thesis advisor: Sandra R. Mott / The purpose of this research was to address the gap in the literature regarding the lack of first hand accounts of the factors that influence adolescent sexual decision making. Using a narrative approach, I asked a cohort of late adolescent participants to tell their stories about the events surrounding their decision to become sexually active, and how this initial decision affected subsequent decision making. The specific research questions that guided the study were: 1) What are late adolescents' perspectives of the factors that influenced their decision to become and remain sexually active? and 2) What is the effect of sexual decision making regarding coital debut on subsequent sexual activity? To accomplish my research aims I used narrative inquiry to elicit rich information, in the adolescents' own words, about what they perceive to be the most salient factors that contributed to their decisions to engage in sexual activity. I recruited a purposive sample of 11 late adolescents between the ages of 18 and 22 years from a series of family planning and sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinics in the Northeastern United States. As their stories unfolded, four main components emerged. These components included the internal and external environmental context, expected social norms, implied sexual consent, and self-reflection and evaluation. The results of this study provide evidence that adolescent sexual decision making is a complex process with multiple layers of influence. Through the stories of my participants, I have constructed a more comprehensive conceptualization of adolescent sexual decision making and related sexual behaviors. This will guide the development of possible interventions to improve health care for this population. These interventions include expanding nursing knowledge to inform the development of theories, practice innovations, research, sexual health education, and policies for addressing adolescents' needs across the continuum of the adolescents' development from childhood to adulthood. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing. / Discipline: Nursing.

In 2014, the Swedish Government decided to review the sexual offences legislation, in order to introduce a consent-based regulation. The main argument in support of a consent-based legislation is that it will change the norms and attitudes regarding gender and sexuality, thereby decreasing the occurrence of sexual violence in society. A consent-based legislation emphasizes the importance of sexual consent within sexual relations, thus giving such legislation a potential to construct a more just and gender-equal sexual culture. Sexual consent is, however, not reducible to a simply “yes” but rather consisting of different elements and dependent on the context in which it is communicated. The aim of this thesis is to examine how the sexual consent is constructed in the publications included in the legislative process and analyze this construction from a heteronormative perspective.  Using the sexual script theory developed by John Gagnon and William Simon demonstrates how sexual consent is constructed in terms of which subject consents to what acts in what context and to what purpose. Analysing the construction of sexual consent from a heteronormative perspective demonstrates how the consent-based legislation both challenge and reproduce normative ideas of sex and sexual culture.  Examining the construction of sexual consent through script theory demonstrates how heteronormative understandings of sexual acts and subjects influence the understanding of which subjects are able to consent to what actions. The construction of consent is characterized by a division between the legislative understanding of sexual offences as a crime against a genderless individual, and a gendered understanding of sexual violence as a part of men’s violence against women. In theory, there is a clear understanding of the difference between consensual and non-consensual sex, but when situated in a heteronormative context these two becomes harder to separate. Therefor, the potential of challenging normative understandings of sexuality of gender seems limited, even though it takes further research in order to establish the actual effects of the legislation.

Informed consent of a patient is currently one of the fastest developing subjects of medical law. Its fundamental principles are based on human anatomy and one's freedom of choice with respect to decisions concerning his or her well-being. The aim of this thesis is to present informed consent in light of the newly enacted legislation concerning medical services, to highlight some of the consequences of the new legislation, as well as to discuss certain aspects of criminal liability of medical personnel in connection with informed consent. The thesis consists of six chapters, which are further divided in to subchapters. The respective chapters outline informed consent of a patient with respect to its basic elements, associated consequences and selected aspects of potential criminal liability. Following the introduction, the first chapter describes the relationship between a doctor and a patient and identifies the upcoming trend of the transformation of the historical paternalistic relationship into a partnership. The second chapter features an overview of the both the national and the international legal sources, which govern informed consent. The third chapter represents the main focus of the thesis and describes the respective elements of an informed consent - disclosure and consent. The...

Ce travail porte sur le consentement à se nuire. L'état doit-il intervenir lorsque des individus consentent à ce qui parait leur être nocif? Cette question soulève la possibilité du paternalisme et de la neutralité de l'État. Le consentement de nuire est un point aveugle de la théorie libérale, et qui concerne en particulier le monde anglo-saxon. Si tous les pays sont concernés par cette question philosophique sérieuse, les Etats-Unis et le Royaume-Uni, du fait de leur héritage libertarien sont plus enclins à être affectés par cette question, la jurisprudence de ces pays en témoigne. Cette thèse interroge les fondements de la théorie libertarienne et libérale, en montrant les ambiguïtés de la notion de consentement. Elle fonde son analyse sur la jurisprudence contemporaine impliquant le consentement à se nuire, en construisant une approche casuistique au problème du consentement de la victime. Ce travail permet de faire une distinction entre deux types de cas: ceux où le consentement est motivé par les forces du marché - le consentement y est souvent contraint; et ceux où le consentement semble être tout à fait volontaire parce qu'il porte sur la sphère de l’intime. / This thesis focuses on consent to harm, and asks what happens when individuals consent to what appears to be harmful. This raises the possibility of paternalism and state neutrality. Consent to harm is a blind spot for liberal theory, and this issue concerns in particular the English-speaking world. If all countries are affected by this serious philosophical question, the US and the UK, because their libertarian tendencies are more prone to be affected by this question, as is visible in the jurisprudence. This work interrogates the premises of libertarian and liberal theory, by showing the ambiguities of the notion of consent. The analysis is based on contemporary jurisprudence involving consent to harm, and constructed on a casuistic approach to the problem of consent to harm. This methodology permits the author to distinguish between two types of cases: those in which consent is motivated by market forces, where consent is often incomplete and coerced; and those in which consent appears to be entirely voluntary because they take place in the intimate sphere.