"Lawyer for Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Montgomery bus boycott, the Tuskegee syphilis study, the desegregation of Alabama schools and the Selma march, and founder of the Tuskegee human and civil rights multicultural center."

Are you alive? What makes you so sure? Most people believe this question has a clear answer—that some law defines our status as living (or not) for all purposes. But they are dead wrong. In this pioneering study, Elizabeth Price Foley examines the many, and surprisingly ambiguous, legal definitions of what counts as human life and death. Foley reveals that “not being dead” is not necessarily the same as being alive, in the eyes of the law. People, pre-viable fetuses, and post-viable fetuses have different sets of legal rights, which explains the law's seemingly inconsistent approach to stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, frozen embryos, in utero embryos, contraception, abortion, homicide, and wrongful death. In a detailed analysis that is sure to be controversial, Foley shows how the need for more organ transplants and the need to conserve health care resources are exerting steady pressure to expand the legal definition of death. As a result, death is being declared faster than ever before. The "right to die," Foley worries, may be morphing slowly into an obligation to die. Foley’s balanced, accessible chapters explore the most contentious legal issues of our time—including cryogenics, feticide, abortion, physician-assisted suicide, brain death, vegetative and minimally conscious states, informed consent, and advance directives—across constitutional, contract, tort, property, and criminal law. Ultimately, she suggests, the inconsistencies and ambiguities in U.S. laws governing life and death may be culturally, and perhaps even psychologically, necessary for an enormous and diverse country like ours.

Educators and technology experts share their thoughts on classroom technology and how equity, the digital divide, and other issues need to be addressed to ensure students and teachers are realizing the full potential of different technologies.

Joseph J. Fins calls for a reconsideration of severe brain injury treatment, including discussion of public policy and physician advocacy.

Cyan was named after a shade of blue, her artist mother's favorite color. The color of the sea. Since her father's death last year, she’s felt just as mercurial and dark as her namesake, and the distance between Cyan and her mother has grown as wide as an ocean. Now they're returning to the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean, where her father's mysterious accident occurred, and joining them will be Kammi--who may soon become a stepsister. Haunted by the secrets of the past, Cyan will explore all the depths of her blueness this summer, discovering the light, the darkness, and the many shades in between that are within her—and within us all.