UGS 303: Life and Death Decisions

Exam 2 Review Sheet

For each of these terms- you should know what or who they are/were; why they are
relevant to the course; who the relevant actors were (in the case of events & cases); a
general sense of when they happened / lived; and the moral dilemmas they
addressed/created. Note: The exam can include any material that has been covered in
class (lectures & films), readings, and discussion sessions, which may not be included
here.

Issues/ Concepts
 California Natural Death Act (NDA)
 NAACP and Legal Defense Fund (LDF)
 Thomas legislation
 Debates about assisted dying
 Doctrine of Double Effect
 Assisted dying in the U.S. and Right-to-Die Movement
 Crystallizing Events
 Deterrence (both individual and general) and its efficacy (whether it works or not)
 Historical connection between slavery and criminal justice system
 Phillips County Massacre
 Race, gender, and lynching in the U.S.
 Trends in lynching and capital punishment over time (see graphs)
 Racial differences and capital punishment
 Science, technology, and capital punishment
 Dehumanization of self and other
 Rwandan conflict between Hutus and Tutsis
 Genocide
 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam
 Euthanasia
 Bybee Memos
 Torture
 13th Amendment
 Death with dignity laws
 Human Genome Project
 “Us vs. Them”
 Lethal injection
 IQ tests and capital punishment
People/ Figures
 Karen Ann Quinlan
 Nancy Cruzan
 Victor Frankl
 Janet Adkins
 Jack Kevorkian (“Dr. Death”)
 Elizabeth Bouvia
 Timothy Quill
 Daniel Callahan
 Harriet McBryde Johnson
 Peter Singer
 “Scottsboro Boys”
 W.E.B. Du Bois
 Jessie Daniel Ames
 Emmett Till
 Justice Harry Blackmun
 Elizabeth Kübler-Ross
 Terri Schaivo
 Cicely Saunders
 Dax Cowart
 Craig Ewert
 Brittany Maynard
 Justice Clarence Thomas
 Leonel Herrera
 Chief Justice William Rehnquist
 Joseph Saikewicz
 Justice Arthur Goldberg
 Governor George Ryan (Illinois)
 Surgeon General Koop
 Justice Antonin Scalia
 Justice Douglass
 Lord Dawson
 Governor Richard Lamm (Colorado)
 Sigmund Freud
Court Cases
 Planned Parenthood v. Casey
 Moore et al. v. Dempsey
 Ruffin v. Commonwealth
 Powell v. Alabama
 Furman v. Georgia
 Washington v. Glucksberg
 Vacco v. Quill
 William L. Maxwell case (Arkansas)

Videos
 Video with Dax Cowart, “Please Let Me Die” [not available online]
 Video with Craig Ewert, “The Suicide Tourist”
(http://video.pbs.org/video/1430431984/)
 Frontline documentary “Remember My Lai”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLc1zaZVCDM)
 Frontline documentary “Ghosts of Rwanda”
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/video/)

All videos shown in class and available in the lecture slides may be covered on the exam.
This is simply a short list to assist with the links that do not appear readily in the lecture
slides.