Ethics and Law [DROIB325]

Learning outcomes

From issues about legal personhood, the course aims to develop a critical vision of the law and of the society that produces it.

Objectives

First, the course builds a conceptual framework. Then the dialectic ethics-law is illustrated through issues related to the legal conception of the human being. Rules about vulnerable persons advocate values such as autonomy, human dignity, protection… These values reflect our conception of humanity and should therefore be questioned.

Content

1.  Ethics and Law : general introduction

Ethics and law can both be understood in several ways, so it is important to start by establishing a common ground for future discussions.

2.  Beginnings of legal personhood

Rules concerning the acquisition of legal personhood, combined to developments of biomedical sciences, have raised numerous ethical issues. The fact that these rules are more or less consistent in law does not prevent their legitimacy to be questioned by their recipients now and then, for no rule can cover such a multiple reality.

3. Flourishing of legal personhood

Adults are presumed to be competent enough to be fully capable in law. So persons perceived as lacking rationality can be deprived of their legal capacity for the sake of their own protection. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities advocates a radical change in the way we protect people with disabilities and challenges our modern vision of legal capacity.

4. End of legal personhood

Even if Belgium is well known abroad for its law about euthanasia, euthanasia is still broadly misunderstood. Leaving aside pros and cons discussions, this law is an opportunity to question the vision of autonomy as the expression of a rational choice, that must ultimately be respected.