The personhood paradox and the 'right to die'

Medical Law Review

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 80-101

  Ford, Mary ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 27644513376     PISSN: 09670742     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/medlaw/fwi004     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. For a discussion of life- and sentience-based accounts of moral status, see Mary Anne Warren, Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things (Oxford Clarendon 1997), chapters 2 and 3.
2. David DeGrazia, 'Great Apes, Dolphins, and the Concept of Personhood' (1997) 35 Southern Journal of Philosophy 301.
3. Liam Clarke, 'The Person in Abortion' (1999) 6 Nursing Ethics 37-46 at 38.
4. [1993] A.C. 789.
5. [2001] Fam. 147.
6. Daniel C. Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Penguin 1997).
7. Ibid., chapter 14, 'Conditions of Personhood' at 269-71.
8. (1972) 2 The Hastings Center Report no. 5.
9. Christian Perring, 'Degrees of Personhood' (1997) 22 Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 173-97 at 181.
10. Laurence Locke, 'Personhood and Moral Responsibility' (1990) 9 Law and Philosophy 39-66 at 41.
11. Bernard Williams, 'Persons, Character and Morality' in A.O. Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons (University of California Press 1976) at 210.
12. Ibid. at 209.
13. Cranford and Smith, 'Consciousness: The Most Critical Moral (Constitutional) Standard for Human Personhood' American Journal of Law and Medicine 1987; XIII (2-3) 233 at 233-4 (emphasis added).
14. Warren, op. cit., n. 1 at 90.
15. Immanuel Kant, trans. Lewis White Beck, Critique of Practical Reason (Bobbs-Merrill 1956) at 166 [162].
16. Warren, op. cit., n. 1 at 100.
17. Immanuel Kant, trans. H.J. Paton, The Moral Law: Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Hutchinson 1948) at 91.
18. Harry Frankfurt, 'Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person' (1971) 86 Journal of Philosophy 5.
19. L. Locke, op. cit., n. 10 at 60,
20. citing Frankfurt, op. cit., n. 18 at 7.
21. L. Locke, op. cit. n. 10 at 61.
22. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford University Press 1999).
23. Jerry Goodenough, 'The Achievement of Personhood' (1997) X Ratio (New Series) 141 at 143.
24. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Roger Woolhouse (Penguin 1997) at 302.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid. at 312.
27. L. Locke, op. cit., n. 10 at 44.
28. John Locke, supra, n. 23.
29. L. Locke, op. cit., n. 10 at 46.
30. Ibid. at 47.
31. Ibid.
32. Derek Parfit, 'Lewis, Perry and What Matters' in A.O. Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons (University of California Press 1976) at 98.
33. Ibid.
34. L. Locke, op. cit., n. 10 at 55.
35. Ibid. at 54-5.
36. Ibid. at 65.
37. Ibid. at 56.
38. Ibid. at 64.
39. Ibid. at 63.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid. at 64.
42. Ibid. at 65.
43. Ibid. at 56 (emphasis added).
44. Pretty v. United Kingdom [2002] 2 F.L.R. 45.
45. I describe value judgments by the courts about quality of life as 'objective' only in the sense that they are not value judgments made by patients themselves about the quality of their lives to them; I do not mean to imply that there is necessarily anything qualitatively 'objective' about such value judgments by the courts.
46. B v. An N.H.S. Hospital Trust [2002] 2 All E.R. 449.
47. Per Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, para. 53 (emphasis added), n. 45.
48. Hoffmann L.J.'s judgment in Airedale N.H.S. Trust v. Bland [1993] A.C. 789 at 827 suggests that, in a conflict between the two principles (sanctity of life and patient autonomy), patient autonomy ought to prevail.
49. [1993] Fam. 95.
50. Ibid. at 113.
51. See, in particular, Re S [1992] 4 All E.R. 671
52. and Re MB (An Adult: Medical Treatment) [1997] 8 Med L.R. 217.
53. [1998] 3 All E.R. 673.
54. Ibid. at 692.
55. M. Brazier, Medicine, Patients and the Law, 3rd edn (Penguin 2003) at 395.
56. For example, Christian Perring, supra, n. 9.