This course provides students with a framework for working through increasingly complex legal and ethical issues that affect Health and Human Services professionals. This framework and broadened perspective will help practitioners recognize and respond to dilemmas in the field. Through an overview of regulatory action and the legislative and judicial processes, students will become familiar with how lawmakers confront changes brought on by pervasive issues such as patient rights, technological advances, and managed care. Following an initial overview of ethical theory, students will analyze precedent setting cases related to such topics as research and individual rights vs. the public good. Based on their own work or current issues in the field, students will apply these concepts to actual situations.