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Description
Health raises important issues of public morality in personal contexts. Some of these contexts are old (e.g. abortion, euthanasia), while others are new (e.g. gene editing and sequencing). Law is an important tool we can use to make sense of these issues, albeit it is not the only one. This module examines how public controversies over health are managed through legal means.听
The course examines conceptual and normative concerns, including legal moralism and value pluralism, questions of constitutional and institutional legitimacy in the law-making process, indeterminacy and the rule of law, as well as questions of the powers of courts, patients (and loved ones) and practitioners (clinical discretion). We will consider different regulatory strategies: different branches of law (e.g., criminal, tort and public), recourse to rights (including human rights), court supervision, and authorisation and licensing systems.
These concerns and strategies are examined through the study of substantive topics in the area of health, which are selected following discussion with students. Topics covered are likely to include consent to treatment, medical termination of pregnancy, assisted reproductive technologies, the use of human tissue (eg for organ transplantation), end-of-life care (including assisted suicide and euthanasia), public health law (eg infectious disease control) and NHS law (rationing and rights to care).
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 8th April 2024.
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