John Douard
John Walter Douard (April 23, 1945 – September 22, 2020) was an American philosopher, bioethicist and appellate public defender. He wrote on the rhetoric of crime, medical humanities and forensic psychiatry while teaching part-time at Rutgers University and, from 2003, serving as an assistant deputy public defender in New Jersey.[1][2]
Douard was born in Chicago, Illinois.[1] He earned a B.A. (1970) and a Ph.D. in philosophy (1986) from the University of Illinois Chicago,[3] and later completed a J.D. at Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 2001.[1]
From 1986 to 1997 Douard was assistant professor of philosophy and health policy at the Institute for the Medical Humanities, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston.[4] He joined Rutgers University – New Brunswick as adjunct faculty in 1997 and taught courses such as Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of Science and Bioethics until 2020.[5]
After clerking in the New Jersey Appellate Division, Douard entered the Office of the New Jersey Public Defender in 2003, remaining there for the rest of his life.[1] Among many appeals he argued was State v. Salaam (2013).[2]
Douard’s work combined philosophy, criminal law and critical rhetoric. His best-known book, Monstrous Crimes and the Failure of Forensic Psychiatry (Springer, 2013), co-authored with Pamela D. Schultz, critiques psychiatric justifications for post-sentence civil commitment and proposes a public-health approach to sexual offending.[6]
Douard died at his home in Montclair, New Jersey, on September 22, 2020, aged 75.[1]
Selected works
- 2007 – Loathing the Sinner, Medicalizing the Sin: Why Sexually Violent Predator Statutes Are Unjust. International Journal of Law & Psychiatry, 30 (1), 36–48.
- 2008–2009 – Sex Offender as Scapegoat: The Monstrous Other Within. New York Law School Law Review, 53, 31–53.
- 2011 – Scapegoating the Sex Offender: The Monstrous Other. In B. K. Schwartz (Ed.), Handbook of Sex Offender Treatment, pp. 18-1 – 18-22.
- 2013 – Monstrous Crimes and the Failure of Forensic Psychiatry (with Pamela D. Schultz). Springer, International Library of Ethics, Law & the New Medicine, vol. 53.
- 2017 – Asperger’s Syndrome and Downloading Child Pornography: Why Criminal Punishment Is Unjust and Ineffective. In L. A. Dubin & E. Horowitz (Eds.), Caught in the Web of the Criminal Justice System: Autism, Developmental Disabilities and Sex Offenses, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, pp. 219–234.
External links
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Hugh M. Moriarty Funeral Home
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 John W. Douard, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant
- ↑ University of Illinois Chicago
- ↑ Douard, John (1990). "Ethics, AIDS, and community responsibility," Journal of Medical Humanities, 11, 87–95.
- ↑ Philosophy of Law – syllabus, Rutgers University
- ↑ John Douard , Pamela D. Schultz (2013) Monstrous Crimes and the Failure of Forensic Psychiatry, Springer, isbn=978-94-007-5279-5