Unbefriended Elderly: Making Medical Treatment Decisions for Patients without Surrogates

Call for Papers

AALS Joint
Program

Section on Aging
and the Law  ●  Section on Law, Medicine, and Health Care

2015 AALS Annual
Meeting in Washington, D.C.

January 3, 2015 from
3:30 to 5:15 p.m.

Unbefriended
Elderly: 

Making Medical
Treatment Decisions for Patients without Surrogates

The
AALS Section on Aging and the Law and the AALS Section on Law, Medicine, and
Health Care are sponsoring a joint program at the January 2015 Annual
Meeting.  The program will consider many
of the issues faced by elders, doctors, and the health care and social services
systems when making medical treatment decisions for those incapacitated
patients and residents who have no reasonably available legally authorized
decision maker.

There
are three confirmed panelists for this program:

(1)  
Ellen
Fox, MD, former Chief Officer for Ethics in Health Care, U.S. Department of

Veterans Affairs

(2) Professor Lawrence A. Frolik,
University of Pittsburgh School of Law

(3) Erica Wood, JD, Assistant Director, ABA
Commission on Law and Aging

Two
additional panelists will be selected through this call for papers.  Either paper proposals or completed papers
are acceptable for submission.  Selected
panelists may receive an offer for publication from the Journal of International Aging, Law & Policy, a joint
publication of Stetson University College of Law and AARP.  The Journal
is interested in papers that have an international or comparative
component.  Acceptance of a publication offer
is not a condition for serving as a panelist. 
There is no formal requirement as to length of the proposal or final
paper.  Preference will be given to
papers that offer novel scholarly insights on the panel topic.  A paper may have already been accepted for
publication as long as it will not be published prior to the Annual Meeting.

A
successful proposal may focus on the broader legal, medical, or social aspects
of making medical treatment decisions for patients without surrogates.  Also welcome are proposals that focus on ways
to prevent patients from becoming unbefriended in the first place.  This could include analysis of: (a) broader default surrogate laws, (b) better advance
care planning, or        (c) more effective public guardianship procedures.  Narrative pieces concerning the
administrative and regulatory issues presented will also be considered. 

Paper
proposals will be reviewed by a committee of law professors from both AALS
sections. 

Please
submit your paper or proposal by Friday, August 31, 2014 at 5:00 p.m.  Please send it BOTH to Mark Bauer
(Chair, AALS Section on Aging and the Law), Stetson University College of Law, mbauer@law.stetson.edu;
and to Thaddeus Pope (Chair-Elect, Section
on Law, Medicine, and Health Care), Hamline University School of Law, tpope01@hamline.edu.