End-of-life healthcare decisions, ethics and law: the debate in Spain

The debate on euthanasia in Spain has been ongoing from the beginning of the 20th century and remains extant. Three periods can be identified: prior to 1978, 1978-2002, and after 2002. The debate increased significantly after the Ramon Sampedro case (1995-1998), and was fuelled with new, although very different cases, such as those of Leganés (2005-2008), Jorge Leon (2006) or Inmaculada Echevarria (2006-2007). As a consequence of these cases in 2008 the Regional Government of Andalusia started a legal process to pass a law regulating end-of-life decisions, excluding euthanasia and assisted-suicide, which was finally enacted in 2010. Two other Spanish regions (Navarra and Aragón) passed similar laws. The central government also initiated a legal process to approve a national law, excluding euthanasia and assisted-suicide. The project failed because of the dissolution of the Parliament in June 2011. The new government will have to decide how to continue the process.     

Law and ethics for the bioeconomy and beyond

The convergence of biological, technological and economic realms of life has fostered the development of the bioeconomy as a new feature of contemporary society. As the meaning of life and the human body is redefined in the context of the bioeconomy, new challenges have emerged for ethics and law In the face of these challenges, it is imperative that the currency of regulatory frameworks is maintained through the processes of regular review and update. The National Health and Medical Research Council has recently released the new National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research to provide guidance for health research in Australia. The new National Statement will play an important part in supporting innovation and the development of the knowledge economy.     

Law and ethics of deep brain stimulation

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a non-destructive, adjustable, and mainly reversible method of continuously giving electrical impulses into a small area of the brain via implanted electrodes. It has been established as a standard form of treatment for specific cases of Parkinson's disease, essential tremor and dystonia. It is currently being evaluated for several mental disorders, dementia and even alcoholism. In spite of its growing practical importance, the legal issues have so far undergone almost no analysis. The article outlines both the essential legal questions of DBS from the perspective of German Law as well as major issues of the current ethical debate, and the correlation of both fields.     

Values ethics and legal ethics: the QLD and LETR Recommendations 6, 7, 10, and 11

The Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) Report recommended increased attention to ethics and values and to critical thinking. These aims could be achieved jointly through teaching ethical thinking: not as theory but as part of developing the capacity for ethical conduct. Such a pedagogy has the potential to become a qualifying law degree (QLD) signature pedagogy supporting “life-narratives” of students. The LETR Report recommends a review of the QLD emphasising legal values and ethics. Concern with values and ethics is linked to concern with professional conduct. Maintaining the law degree as a general or liberal qualification is also strongly desired. These potentially conflicting drivers generate ambivalence towards legal ethics as a subject for study, especially if legal ethics are perceived as teaching the professional codes.

Resolution of this tension is achievable through recognising the potential role of ethical teaching as part of an identity apprenticeship. Developing ethical character is as much a liberal as a professional aim. Ethics teaching can play an integrative role in the QLD. Formation of student identity is a central part of higher education taking colouration from being situated in legal education. In this context teaching legal ethics becomes the use of a salient example for carrying out the broader project of developing ethical capacity.     

The Boycott of the Law and the Law of the Boycott: Law, Labour, and Politics in British Columbia

This article uses a critical theoryllegal mobilization perspective to study the 1987–92 trade union boycott of the British Columbia labour law. The problems encountered establishing a total boycott–one that would eschew all contact with the state–and the subsequent modification of the parameters of the boycott through a selective reliance on the law offer an important case from which to learn more about the role of law and legal rights in highly regulated organizations and how collectives mobilize the law. The author argues that legal rights are important to unions because of their ability to mediate the complexity of labour relations through a decentralization of authority. At the same time, mobilization of the law for this purpose accentuates localized identities and unequal resources that operate in tension with a boycott ethos, necessitating a deliberative politics to legitimize the law. By exploring the tension between these two forms of mobilization around law–one to reduce complexity, another to legitimize broad collective norms–the author analyzes and draws some conclusions about the reproduction of social unionism in British Columbia.     

Seeing Law: The Comic,Icon and the Image in Law and Justice

This special issue examines how the comic and the icon prefigure forms of legality that are different to modern law. There is a primal seeing of law unmediated by reading, writing or possibly thinking. This introduction identifies the primacy of the eye, the emergence of visual jurisprudence and the transformations of law as a paper-based material practice to a digitally enabled activity.     

Law, ethical codes, and the report of the CSSP survey on ethics policies. Council of Scientific Society Presidents.

Recently, the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) collected data from its member organizations regarding codes of ethics. To better understand why such a survey would be undertaken, this paper begins by examining what is meant by ethics and highlights some distinctions between law and ethics. It then discusses codes of ethics, stressing their purposes and functions. Finally, it looks at the results of the CSSP survey and evaluates how various organizations formulate and implement their codes.     

规律、规范、规则、原则——西方法学中几个与“法”相关的概念辨析

在西方法学中,有几个与“法”相关的概念,这就是“规律”、“规范”、“规则”和“原则”。一些法学家在对法的论述中,往往把这些概念与法联系起来,他们或者把法说成就是一种“规律”、“规范”、“规则”和“原则”;或者把它们说成是法的本质或构成要素。对这些概念与“法”的关系进行辨析,有助于深化对此的理解。