{"id":9859,"date":"2010-05-06T10:27:32","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T15:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=9859"},"modified":"2010-05-06T10:32:33","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T15:32:33","slug":"reconciling-competing-definitions-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/05\/reconciling-competing-definitions-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Reconciling Competing Definitions of Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When does life end?\u00a0 The question has important consequences for many areas of law, from criminal law to trusts and estates to taxes.\u00a0 The law has traditionally associated death with\u00a0a cessation of\u00a0cardiac and respiratory functioning, but advances in medical technology now mean that hearts and lungs can be kept working artificially for long periods of time.\u00a0 As a result, U.S. law has generally shifted over the past half-century to a new definition of death that turns on whether there has been an irreversible loss of brain functioning.\u00a0 However, as 3L Rachel Delaney explains in a new paper on SSRN<\/a>, Orthodox Jews have continued to adhere to the old cardiac standard as a matter of religious law.\u00a0 This creates a potential for conflict and the possibility of further emotional harm\u00a0for family members at a time when they are already dealing with the loss of a loved one — for instance, if a brain-dead patient were withdrawn from life support\u00a0at a time when the\u00a0patient was not actually dead according \u00a0to the family’s deeply held religious beliefs.<\/p>\n

Rachel thus argues that\u00a0the law should recognize a\u00a0religious exception to the\u00a0brain-death standard.\u00a0 Indeed, she contends that such an exception may be required by the Free Exercise Clause.<\/p>\n

Rachel’s article is entitled “Defining Death: Why All Fifty States Should Adopt the Uniform Definition of Death Act with a Religious Exception.”\u00a0 The abstract appears after the jump.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

This article addresses the tension between the secular, American definition of death and the Jewish law definition of death. While the definition of death has been debated separately in both Jewish and American legal scholarship, the secular and Jewish law definitions of death have not been thoroughly analyzed in relation to one another. The secular definition of death — irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain — conflicts with the Jewish law definition of death — irreversible cessation of respiration. The conflict presents a First Amendment Free Exercise Clause challenge because state laws with strict secular definitions of death preclude Orthodox Jews from practicing Judaism in their final stages of life. This article argues that each state should adopt a definition of death statute that acknowledges the competing goals at issue in the legal definition of death — the recognition of the personal and private nature of death versus the accomplishment of secular and state objectives. New York State offers such a law by including a religious exception to the secular definition of death. Not only does the religious exception provide comfort to families in sad and serious times, but the exception is required by the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause and the right to privacy, and the exception does not significantly interfere with state interests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When does life end?\u00a0 The question has important consequences for many areas of law, from criminal law to trusts and estates to taxes.\u00a0 The law has traditionally associated death with\u00a0a cessation of\u00a0cardiac and respiratory functioning, but advances in medical technology now mean that hearts and lungs can be kept working artificially for long periods of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-scholarship","category-religion-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}