Regulating Autonomy: Sex, Reproduction and Family - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841139467 ISBN 13: 9781841139463

Publisher: Hart Publishing, 2009

Synopsis

These essays explore the nature and limits of individual autonomy in law, policy and the work of regulatory agencies. Authors ask searching questions about the nature and scope of the regulation of 'private' lives, from intimacies, personal relationships and domestic lives to reproduction. They question the extent to which the law does, or should, protect individual autonomy. Recent rapid advances in the development of new technologies - particularly those concerned with human genetics and assisted reproduction - have generated new questions (practical, social, legal and ethical) about how far the state should intervene in individual decision making. Is there an inevitable tension between individual liberty and the common good? How might a workable balance between the public and the private be struck? How, indeed, should we think about 'autonomy'?

The essays explore the arguments used to create and maintain the boundaries of autonomy - for example, the protection of the vulnerable, public goods of various kinds, and the maintenance of tradition and respect for cultural practices. Contributors address how those boundaries should be drawn and interventions justified. How are contemporary ethical debates about autonomy constructed, and what principles do they embody? What happens when those principles become manifest in law?

About this title

About the Authors

Shelley Day Sclater has been a lawyer and academic social scientist and now works as a freelance writer and researcher. She was Professor of Psychology and Law at the University of East London.

Fatemeh Ebtehaj is associate member of the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge.

Emily Jackson is Professor of Law at the London School of Economics.

Martin Richards is Emeritus Professor of Family Research at the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hart Publishing
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1841139467
• ISBN 13: 9781841139463
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 298
• Editor: Sclater Shelley Day, Ebtehaj Fatemeh, Jackson Emily, Richards Martin