Search results

Abuse and misuse of Substitute Decision-Making (SDMg) authority impacts the lives of children and adults with decision-making disabilities. The concerns raised in this paper amplify previous attention addressed by advocacy agencies and law reformists such as the Law Commission of Ontario. I analyse problems associated with Plenary Guardianship from both the lived experience of the non-guardian perspective and from the authority bestowed to the Guardian pursuant to the Guardianship and Administration Act 1990 of Western Australia legitimating the unintended capacity to abuse one’s substitute decision-making authority. Substitute decision-making arrangements enable decisions to be made on behalf of a person with a decision-making disability; usually made when such arrangements are necessary and subject to safeguards. Detrimentally, the substitute decision-maker (SDM) can assert broader powers beyond sensible measures that include thwarting investigations undertaken by family members; removing family members from the life of the person for whom an order is made; inappropriately applying a paternalistic or ‘best interest’ approach to decision-making where other approaches are required; failing to consider the individual’s wishes or making decisions contrary to those wishes; having insufficient contact with the individual; and, sharing insufficient or incorrect information. Moreover, they may subject the individual for whom an SDM order is made to experimental medical treatment in tandem with imposing or condoning severe and harmful restrictive-practices. Consequently, the second issue addressed in this paper concerns normalising both chemical and physical restrictive-practices that are both morally abhorrent and clinically highly questionable. Furthermore, often undertaken by service providers and their contracted psychiatrists and treating teams, endorsed under authority of a collaborating Guardian or SDM.

Purpose – The chapter aims to explore women's entrepreneurship in the sciences, specifically, veterinary medicine, and to highlight future potential.

Methodology/approach – Following a review of the extant literature, the chapter employs a single case approach to explore the experiences of a woman academic entrepreneur in the field of veterinary medicine.

Findings – The findings support the view that women are significantly under-represented in the sciences (SET/STEM) both as professionals and as entrepreneurs. The chapter also finds that, due to a relatively low number of veterinary professionals currently working in industry and/or commercialisable research areas, the sector offers significant potential for entrepreneurship, particularly among women veterinarians.

Research limitations/implications – Despite providing rich and meaningful insights that enhance understanding, the single case approach limits the potential for generalising the findings.

Practical implications – Given the significant increase in the number of women entering veterinary education in recent years, the chapter has important implications for how gender is considered in the promotion of entrepreneurship within veterinary medicine curricula.

Social implications – In view of the imminent gender shift within the profession, the case discussed in this chapter serves as an important role model to encourage more women to engage in entrepreneurship.

Originality/value of chapter – As one of the few studies offering insights on women's entrepreneurship in veterinary medicine, this chapter helps enhance our understanding of the field.

While the rest of the world focused on girls' issues around education, girls' victimization in the family, girls' problems with sexual assault and harassment, and girls forced into early marriage, the US seems curiously mired in a series of media-driven moral panics about girlhood. The last few decades have seen worries about girls: girls going bad, mean girls, and girls who are bullies, girls mimicking boys' violence, and girls getting sexually trafficked and engaging in prostitution. Given this, it is important to review several key themes: the current evidence about the actual dimensions of female delinquency and trends in juvenile arrests, particularly girls' arrests for non-traditional offences; the role of race in girls' delinquency will also be explored. This analysis will document the need to explore gendered consequences in the policing of girls' misbehaviour. Specifically, the chapter will explore the implication of girls' increasing presence in a largely male-oriented juvenile justice system and the feminisation of juvenile justice in the United States.

Academic freedom is often constrained by self-censorship. Measurement of this constraint is difficult because it is often unconscious, so it is useful to explore the underlying motivations. Greater-good arguments are an important motivator of self-censorship. Humans are social creatures who fear being accused of harming the greater good. When a scholar’s findings conflict with a paradigm alleged to serve the greater good, self-censorship is tempting. However, the greater good is not necessarily served by paradigms that invoke it. Discrepant data often lead to truths that a dominant paradigm obscures. Thus, the greater good is better served by a free flow of evidence than by conforming to a paradigm that evokes the greater good. This chapter presents an example in the Social Sciences. The paradigm of social harmony in the state of nature appears to serve the greater good, and evidence of aggression in the state of nature is often dismissed. But understanding the conflict in the state of nature can help people manage aggression today. This example can help scholars recognize and transcend the natural tendency to self-censor.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Purpose – This chapter considers the consequences on liberty in relationship to the development of the international problem-solving court movement.

Design/methodology/approach – The research, which relies principally on ethnographic fieldwork in six different common law countries (England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Canada, and the United States), explores the development of local problem-solving courts in each jurisdiction. These include drug courts, community courts, domestic violence courts, and mental health courts. The ethnographic fieldwork was supplemented with data from various other sources, including government reports, parliamentary debates, evaluations of individual court programs, publications issued by various advocacy groups, media accounts, public statements and articles by problem-solving court judges, and analyses of specialty courts in law reviews and other academic journals.

Findings – The research reveal that the five countries outside of the United States demonstrate greater concern with protecting the dignity of the court, due process, and individual rights – or what the Australians refer to as open and natural justice.

Originality/value – It is the first large-scale comparative study of problem-solving courts in the common law countries where the movement is most advanced.