Mini Law – Mine Or Yours?: The Human Body, Tissues and The Decision To Dispose
Join us for a series of engaging public lectures that will give you a taste of what a legal education is all about.
This session will be hosted by Professor Joshua Shaw.
The lecture will survey doctrines of the 'common law' - a form of judge-made law - that affects how people use and dispose of living and dead human bodies and tissue, and the legal theories upon which scholars, lawyers and courts ordinarily rely to clarify and rationalize those doctrines (e.g., property, and personality). The survey will, in part, consider the history of the human body's treatment in English and Canadian law, including laws of the church (ecclesiastical law), laws of 'human property' (enslavement, especially in the transatlantic slave trade) and laws responding to the concern of surgeons, medical students and their associates 'bodysnatching' to procure materials for anatomical study.
The lecture will then consider contemporary law and legal theories, critically evaluating them in light of interviews completed with people who have experienced the disposal of their own or a family member's bodily matter, or have experienced such a disposal in their professional work, before concluding by considering an alternative framework for law that moves beyond property and conventional ideas of the person. The lecture should be of interest to all, but especially those interested in health law, medical law and legal philosophy.
Categories
Faculty Interest, Student Interest, Staff Interest, Mini Law School
Time
Location
Room W105
Cost
Free and open to the public
Additional Information
Masks are required
