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More on the Right to Refuse Treatment: Brother Fox and the Mentally Ill in New York

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Extract

The idea for this article first occurred to me more than one year ago when the Brother Fox case was decided by the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York. At the same time, debate was raging among, and between, lawyers and psychiatrists about the right of involuntary psychiatric patients to refuse antipsychotic medication. Thus. I was led to consider the philosophical and legal relationship between the so-called right to die and the right to refuse psychiatric treatment.

Type
Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics

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References

Eichnerv. Dillon, 420 N.E.2d 64 (N.Y. 1981).Google Scholar
Rogers v. Okin, 478 F. Supp. 1342 (D. Mass. 1979), aff’d in part and rev’d in part, 634 F.2d 650 (1st Cir. 1980), vacated and remanded sub nom. Mills v. Rogers, 102 S. Ct. 2442 (1982).Google Scholar
Such a presumption appears to be mandated by statute in New York. See N.Y. Mental Hyg. Law §29.03 (McKinney, 1978).Google Scholar
See Winters v. Miller, 446 F.2d 65 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 985 (1971).Google Scholar
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Eichner v. Dillon, supra note 1, at 71.Google Scholar
Legal Advisory Committee, Concern for Dying, Inc., Uniform Right to Refuse Treatment Act (Draft) (May 1982).Google Scholar
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See generally Dershowitz, A.M., Preventive Confinement: A Suggested Framework for Constitutional Analysis, Texas Law Review 51 (7): 1277(1973).Google Scholar