Carl Wellman – författare

The Proliferation of Rights explores how the assertion of rights has expanded dramatically since World War II. Carl Wellman illuminates for the reader the historical developments in each of the major categories of rights, including human rights, civil rights, women''s rights, patient rights, and animal rights. He concludes by assessing where this proliferation has been legitimate and helpful, cases where it has been illusory and unproductive, and alternatives to the appeal to rights.

The Proliferation of Rights explores how the assertion of rights has expanded dramatically since World War II. Carl Wellman illuminates for the reader the historical developments in each of the major categories of rights, including human rights, civil rights, women''s rights, patient rights, and animal rights. He concludes by assessing where this proliferation has been legitimate and helpful, cases where it has been illusory and unproductive, and alternatives to the appeal to rights.

Medical Law and Moral Rights discusses live issues arising in modern medical practice. Do patients undergoing intolerable irremediable suffering have a moral right to physician-assisted suicide? Ought they to have a comparable legal right? Do the moral duties of a mother to care for and not abuse her child also apply to her fetus? Ought fetuses to be given legal rights requiring pregnant women to submit to medical treatment without their consent? Ought single women, homosexual couples or persons carrying serious genetic defects to have a legal right to procreate? Ought a physician to perform an abortion requested for some frivolous reason? Ought physicians to be permitted to refuse to provide medically futile treatment demanded by their patients? An examination of relevant court cases shows how United States law answers these questions. The author then advocates improvements in the law to make it respect our moral rights more fully. To justify his conclusions, he proposes original conceptions of the human rights to life, procreational autonomy, privacy, equitable treatment and personal security. Thus, these essays test the usefulness of the theory of rights explained and defended in An Approach to Rights and elsewhere.

This book analyzes emergency legislations formed in response to terrorism. In recognition that different countries, with different legal traditions, have different solutions, it adopts a comparative point of view. The countries profiled include America, France, Israel, Poland, Germany and United Kingdom. 

The goal is not to offer judgment on one response or the other. Rather, the contributors offer a comprehensive and thoughtful examination of the entire concept. In the process, they draw attention to the inadaptability of traditional legal and philosophical categories in a new and changing political world. 

The contributors first criticize the idea of these legislations. They then go on to develop different models to respond to these crises. They build a general analytical framework by answering such questions as: What is an emergency legislation? What kinds of emergencies justify laws of this nature? Why is contemporary terrorism such a specific emergency justifying new laws? 

Using legal and philosophical reflections, this study looks at how we are changing society. Coverage also provides historical experiences of emergency legislations to further illustrate this point. In the end, readers will gain insight into the long-term consequences of these legislations and how they modify the very work of the rule of law.