Thomas Gutmann

This chapter demonstrates that counter-arguments against such a right from analytic legal theory, among them Steiner’s, do not succeed. Although there are no rights on the part of post-mortem persons, a right to bequeath can be explained by and built around posthumous interests of the testator that might be adversely affected after his or her demise. This perspective, however, would have to be based upon an interest theory of rights. For proponents of a will theory of rights such as Steiner, the Hohfeldian approach offers a different and more adequate way to reconstruct a right to bequeath, not as a claim-right, but as a legal power to create a persisting legal relation. The existence and validity of such a legal relation is independent of whether the person who created it can still be ascribed or is able to express any subjective interest in it or any direction of will. If this legal relation is not honoured, if the legal duties created and defined by it are not fulfilled, the testator’s right to bequeath is infringed upon. As there are no limits to the right to bequeath based on conceptions of individual rights or the technicalities of legal theory, the chapter will point to more promising paths for a normative critique of the right to bequeath.

In every Western democracy today, inheritances have a very profound influence on people’s lives. This motivates renewed scholarship on inheritance law by philosophy and the legal sciences. The present volume aims to contribute to some ongoing areas of inquiry while also filling some gaps in research. It is organized in a highly interdisciplinary way. In the thirteen chapters of the book, written by outstanding philosophers and legal scholars, the following questions, among others, are discussed: What is the nature of the right to bequeath? What are the social functions of bequest and inheritance? What arguments concerning justice have philosophers and legal scholars advanced in favour or against practices of bequest and inheritance? How should we think about taxing the wealth transfers that occur in bequest and inheritance? In discussing these questions, the authors break new ground and offer much needed insight into several related domains, such as the philosophy of law; legal theory; general and applied ethics; social and political philosophy; theories of justice; and the history of legal, political, and economic thought. This book will be of great interest to scholars in these areas as well as policy-makers.

Especially during the last three decades, there has been a fine-grained debate on the notion of personal autonomy. This article will suggest taking one important distinction within this debate more seriously: the differentiation between “personal autonomy” designating a family of ideal, gradual, and hence at least moderately perfectionist conceptions about what an autonomous person is and what is called “autonomy as right”. These are not different dimensions of one concept, but independent concepts with disparate, even conflicting normative functions and should be kept clearly separate from each other. Treating these two concepts merely as different aspects of one and the same notion of personal autonomy, as done by most authors, is severely misleading. For clarity, we will ultimately need different words for divergent concepts. It will be suggested that “autonomy as right” should no longer be called “autonomy”, but forthrightly the “right to self-determination” or, in accordance with Thomas Hobbes, “authority”.

Die Wissenschaftsfreiheit garantiert die Freiheit individueller Forschung und Lehre und die Institution der freien Wissenschaft. Nicht alles, was der deutsche Professor tut und sagt und nicht alles, was sich unter dem Dach einer deutschen Universität ereignet, fällt in ihren Schutzbereich. Zum scientific ethos, der sozialen Rollenerwartung an Wissenschaftler/innen, gehört eine individuelle Verantwortung für die Wissenschaftsfreiheit. Sie impliziert nicht zuletzt, sich nicht mit Kräften gemein zu machen, die die Idee einer wissenschaftlich aufgeklärten Deliberation systematisch untergraben.

The double thesis sketched in broad strokes in this essay will be that modus vivendi conceptions do not qualify as viable alternatives to political liberalism. In order to be normatively plausible, modus vivendi conceptions depend on a liberal framework and on the normative reasoning justifying it. Within such a liberal framework, however, modus vivendi theory and modus vivendi institutions are necessary. Modus vivendi theory is analysed to be a normatively inconsistent approach that cannot be successful in its attempt to undermine liberalism’s aspiration to occupy a privileged normative position vis-à-vis other kinds of regimes. Pluralist theories of the modus vivendi kind, dissociating themselves from normative individualism which takes individuals as the core elements of the political and legal processes, are in danger of destroying the very base of a sound political idea of pluralism. The essay especially questions how much realism is found in the “realist turn” in recent political theory, of which the modus vivendi approach is part, given systematic underestimation of the legal system in modus vivendi theorizing.

Definition of the problem. Voluntary active euthanasia is, in certain circumstances, morally permissible and should be permitted by law. Autonomous persons may have a fundamental interest in experiencing ”death in dignity” in accordance with their own preferences. This interest is protected by the concept of human dignity assumed by German law. Some prerequisites being met, the moral and legal autonomy right to determine the time and manner of one’s own death includes a right to secure active euthanasia from a willing physician, and a physician’s acceding to the patient’s request be may morally the right thing to do. Arguments and conclusion: Most arguments against the justifiability of voluntary active euthanasia unveil their weakness when scrutinized. However, insofar as legalized voluntary active euthanasia would be subject to intolerable abuse, our policy options are dilemmatic, and the concept of human dignity as it has been taken for granted in German legal discourse, is questioned. There is no option other than seeking safety in legal procedures for every single case

ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag bringt Gründe für die These vor, dass aktive Sterbehilfe – die Tötung eines einwilligungsfähigen Patienten auf sein ausdrückliches, ernsthaftes und stabiles Verlangen hin – unter bestimmten Umständen moralisch erlaubt ist und rechtlich erlaubt sein sollte. Autonome Personen haben ein zentrales, von ihrem Anspruch auf Wahrung ihrer Menschenwürde geschütztes Interesse daran, „ihren” Tod sterben zu können. Aus diesem geschützten Interesse resultieren Dispositionsbefugnisse über das eigene Sterben, die auch das Recht beinhalten, sich hierzu der freiwillig geleisteten Hilfe Dritter zu bedienen. Soweit das Argument eines möglichen Missbrauchs erlaubter aktiver Sterbehilfe ernst zu nehmen ist, stehen wir jedoch einer unausweichlich dilemmatischen Entscheidung gegenüber, die das bisherige Verständnis des Menschenwürdeprinzips des Grundgesetzes in Frage stellt. Dieser Konflikt kann, wenn überhaupt, nur durch rechtlich institutionalisierte Verfahren zur Prüfung jedes Einzelfalles gelöst werden.

During the last two decades a broad and intensive discussion has taken place in the field of medical ethics. Especially in the English-speaking countries, “Biomedical Ethics” have developed as a part of secular, philosophical moral theory. Two ethical problems in organ transplantation – living organ donation and organ allocation – illustrate that this transition reflects both the complex ethical questions raised by rapid changes in the biological sciences and in health care, and the fact that traditional Hippocratic ethics have proven to be inadequate in several respects

Legal restrictions of the right to self-determination increasingly pretend to be compatible with the liberal concept of autonomy: they act upon a ‘soft’ or autonomy-orientated paternalistic rationale. Conventional liberal critique of paternalism turns out to be insensitive to the intricate normative problems following from ‘soft’ or ‘libertarian’ paternalism. In fact, these autonomy-oriented forms of paternalism could actually be even more problematic and may infringe liberty rights even more intensely than hard paternalistic regulation. This paper contributes to the systematic differentiation of soft and hard paternalism by discussing the (legal) concept of autonomy and elaborates the moral and legal limits of autonomy-orientated paternalism