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7Vegetative State – The Untold StoryNew Law Journal 152 1272. 2002.Airedale NHS Trust v Bland establishes three principles among which is the controversial idea that people in a PVS, though not dying, have no best interests and no meaningful life. Accordingly, it is argued, they may have their food and fluids, whether delivered by tube or manually, removed, with the result that they die. Laing challenges this view arguing that not only is this bad medical science, it is unjustly discriminatory and at odds with our duties to the severely disabled. Laing highligh…Read more
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6LawIn George Kurian (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Christian Civilisation, Blackwell. 2012.An analysis of the concept of law, its source and connection with human positive law. The article begins by noting that “law” relates not only to prescriptions governing the behavior of human individuals. The term has a far wider sense. It can also refer to a standard or rule that binds things or events. This sense of the term covers the laws of the physical as well as the moral sciences. There is a distinction to be drawn between scientific laws of nature and moral laws. Regularities in natural…Read more
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6MonotheismIn George Kurian (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Christian Civilisation, Blackwell. 2012.A consideration of monotheism. The term ordinarily suggests belief in one God and derives from the Greek monos meaning “one” and theos meaning “god.” In the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the one god is regarded as supreme lord and creator of the universe, almighty, all-knowing, and all-good. Traditionally, Christianity has taught that God revealed himself to our first parents, Adam and Eve, as the one true God in Genesis. The Old Testament reveals a jealous God who forbi…Read more
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6Managerialising DeathLaw Society Gazette. 2013.The Liverpool Care Pathway is intended as a palliative care regime at the end of life. Even its critics agree that certain of its recommendations may be useful and appropriate. Additionally, critics are aware that there are occasions when death may be a foreseen side effect of perfectly licit palliation whose primary ends are not homicidal at all. It is evident that treatment may be over-expensive, over-burdensome or simply futile. There is no suggestion that critics of the Pathway adhere irrati…Read more
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6Disabled Need Our ProtectionLaw Society Gazette 101 12. 2004.The Mental Incapacity Bill not only paves the way for euthanasia, but invites wholesale abuse and homicide, writes Jacqueline Laing. On 19 October 2004, when the Mental Capacity Bill was at its crucial committee stage, the Law Society issued a statement of ‘strong support’, claiming that it empowers patients and in no way introduces euthanasia. Laing argues that the Bill threatens the incapacitated by granting a raft of new third parties power to require that health professionals withhold ‘trea…Read more
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5On the Wrong TrackSolicitors Journal 154 2. 2010.The House of Lords in Purdy forced the Director of Public Prosecutions to issue offence-specific guidance on assisted suicide, but Jacqueline Laing argues that the resulting interim policy adopted by the Director of Public Prosecutions is unconstitutional, discriminatory and illegal.
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4Los derechos Human y la Nueva EugenesiaSCIO 4 65-81. 2009.On the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Laing contends that the practice of eugenics has not disappeared. Conceptually related to the utilitarian and Social Darwinist worldview and historically evolving out of the practice of slavery, it led to some of the most spectacular human rights abuses in human history. The compulsory sterilization of and experimentation on those deemed “undesirable” and “unfit” in many technologically developed states like the US, Scandi…Read more
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2The Connection between Law and Justice in the Natural Law TraditionIn Nick Spencer (ed.), Religion and Law, Theos. 2012.Law, we are told, is a system of rules, created by men to govern human behaviour. Students of law, introduced to legal systems, become familiar with varied sources of law – legislative, judicial and executive in character. There are undoubtedly prescriptive human rules that govern men set up by public authorities that are advertised as being for the common good. These appear as visible, socially constructed systems in different jurisdictions and even as international systems across jurisdictions…Read more
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Intention and CulpabilityDissertation, Oxford. 1997.A thesis that aims to demonstrate that intention is an ineradicable feature of the criminal law, both structuring the special part while remaining essential to the general. We cannot without interfering with the natural logic of the criminal law eliminate the concept of intention.
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The Right to Live: Reply to the Chief Executive of the Law SocietyLaw Society Gazette 102 11. 2005.The chief executive of the Law Society proposes that the Mental Capacity Bill is a progressive initiative enhancing personal autonomy. Laing replies to this by showing that the Bill, for from enhancinging personal autonomy explodes it by inviting homicide by unaccountable third parties, allowing non-therapeutic research and organ-removal without consent and creating a secret and unaccountable court with a lethal power over the vulnerable incapacitated.
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Natural law reasoning in applied ethicsIn George Duke & Robert P. George (eds.), The Cambridge companion to natural law jurisprudence, Cambridge University Press. 2017.
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New Reproductive Technologies are Morally ProblematicIn James Torr (ed.), Medical Ethics, Greenhaven Press. 2000.A short article examining the problems of the fertility industry, commodifying human life and allowing unaccountable third parties to create children in ways that undermine their identity by way of donor conception, human cloning and artificial reproductive techniques.
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Philosophy of Law |