Which was tried first: Goodridge v. Department of Public Health or Dred Scott v. Sandford?
Goodridge v. Department of Public Health Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003), is a landmark state appellate court case dealing with same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. The November 18, 2003, decision was the first by a U.S. state's highest court to find that same-sex couples had the right to marry. Despite numerous attempts to delay the ruling, and to reverse it, the first marriage licenses were issued to same-sex couples on May 17, 2004, and the ruling has been in full effect since that date.
Health court Health courts are proposed specialized courts for handling medical malpractice claims. They are characterized by the use of specially trained adjudicators, independent expert witnesses, and predictable damage awards. Successful administrative compensation systems currently exist in New Zealand and Scandinavia, and limited programs also operate in Florida and Virginia. The nonpartisan coalition Common Good, led by Philip K. Howard, and the Harvard School of Public Health have advocated implementing health courts on a wider scale in the U.S. The potential advantages of health courts include decreasing administrative costs, improving access to compensation for injured patients, and disincentivizing defensive medicine. By using trained judges and independent experts, health court advocates hope to achieve more fair outcomes at lower costs. Critics of the health courts concept contend that is ill-conceived, that it would be unfair to patients, that it would be unlikely to achieve its objectives, and that such of its goals as are reasonable can be achieved more fairly and with greater efficiency under the existing civil justice system. In addition, experts have suggested that health courts would be inevitably biased towards physicians, and that the bureaucracy needed to introduce safeguards against such bias would negate any cost savings.