The Autonomy Of Law

This collection of essays from legal philosophers offers an assessment of the nature and viability of legal positivism. It addresses questions such as: to what extent is the law adequately described as autonomous?; and should legal theorists maintain a conceptual separation of law and morality?.

The notion that consent based on the concept of autonomy, underpins a good or beneficent medical intervention is deeply rooted in the jurisprudence of most countries throughout the world. Autonomy, Consent and the Law examines these notions in the UK, Australia and the US, and critiques the way in which autonomy and consent are treated in bioethics and law.

Jennifer Nedelsky claims that we must rethink our notion of autonomy, rejecting the usual vocabulary of control, boundaries and individual rights. If we understand that we are fundamentally in relation to others, she argues, we will recognize that we become autonomous with others.

By juxtaposing European and American concepts of autonomy in the law as they are applied to families, capital punishment and criminal trials, authors reveal the common values that justify all legal systems. This book sheds new light on the fundamental purpose of law by examining how European and American lawyers, judges, and citizens actually apply and should apply legal autonomy to litigation, legislation, and the law itself.

This book intertwines two major themes in contemporary legal theory – the concepts of human dignity and the problem of the autonomy and limits of the law – while also addressing two other key aspects – the first one concerned with human rights practices and foundations (in their direct connections with the issue of dignity), the second one considering the role that the law’s aspirations attribute to the experience of an autonomous subject-person (and the demands that identify his/her position in the dialectical counterpoint with the rethinking of a community). The diversity of perspectives that each of these themes allows is explored in various contexts and with unmistakable implications concerning juridical validity, rule of law practices, pluralism, political and practical-cultural challenges, and divisive “bio-ethical” issues. This means considering the separation or separability theses between law and morality and the juridically relevant experience of person(hood) as a dialectic between autonomy and responsibility, the orthodox and heterodox images of comparable concreteness and incomparable singularity, the challenges of external points of view and interdisciplinary approaches.

Autonomy in the Law considers one of the most important benefits of the rule of law. Juxtaposing European and American conceptions of autonomy in the law of families, capital punishment and, criminal trials reveals the common values that justify all legal systems. Law protects the autonomy of individuals and associations by defending the boundaries of their own self-rule. This book illuminates the fundamental purpose of law by examining how European and American lawyers, judges and citizens do and should apply legal autonomy to the practical circumstances of litigation, legislation and the law.

This analysis of the law's approach to healthcare decision-making critiques its liberal foundations in respect of three categories of people: adults with capacity, adults without capacity and adults who are subject to mental health legislation. Focusing primarily on the law in England and Wales, the analysis also draws on the law in the United States, legal positions in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Scotland and on the human rights protections provided by the ECHR and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Having identified the limitations of a legal view of autonomy as primarily a principle of non-interference, Mary Donnelly questions the effectiveness of capacity as a gatekeeper for the right of autonomy and advocates both an increased role for human rights in developing the conceptual basis for the law and the grounding of future legal developments in a close empirical interrogation of the law in practice.

Provides an unprecedented historical, theoretical and comparative analysis and appraisal of party autonomy in private international law. These issues are of great practical importance to any lawyer dealing with cross-border legal relationships, and great theoretical importance to a wide range of scholars interested in law and globalisation.