Jesse Wall – författare

When part of a person's body is separated from them, or when a person dies, it is unclear what legal status the item of bodily material is able to obtain. A 'no property rule' which states that there is no property in the human body was first recorded in an English judgment in 1882. Claims based on property rights in the human body and its parts have failed on the basis that the human body is not the subject of property. Despite a recent series of exceptions to the 'no property rule', the law still has no clear answer as to the legal status of the body or its material. In this book, Wall examines the appropriate legal status of bodily material, and in doing so, develops a way for the law to address disputes over the use and storage of bodily material that, contrary to the current trend, resists the application of property law. Wall assesses when a person ought to be able to possess, control, use, or profit from, his or her own bodily material or the bodily material of another person. Bodily material may be valuable because it retains a functional unity with the body or is a material resource that is in short supply. With this in mind, Wall measures the extent to which property law can represent the rights and duties that protects the entitlement that a person may exercise in bodily material, and identifies the limits to the appropriate application of property law. An alternative to property law is developed with reference to the right of bodily integrity and the right to privacy.

Since the criminal law acquits a person who mistakenly believed that another person consented to the sex that they forced upon them: 'rape is not prohibited; it is regulated' (to borrow Mackinnon's phrase). This book is concerned with the legal category of 'the exculpatory mistaken belief in consent', why this category ought to be narrowed, and how it can be narrowed without departing from criminal law's retributive morality and principles of criminalisation. The book calls for three reforms of the criminal law. First, sex itself should be a pro tanto wrong, where consent can justify the wrong or a mistaken belief in consent can excuse the wrong. Second, consent ought to be defined in terms of the objective words and overt actions that express a subjective attitude. Third, whether the defendant had an exculpatory mistaken belief ought to be determined solely by having regard to the steps the defendant had taken to ascertain whether the complainant consented. These calls are predicated on a range of philosophical inquiries, including explanations of: how all sex instrumentalizes and objectifies another person; how consent performs of trilogy of functions by representing a choice, expressing a person's interests, and by empowering a person to change their normative relationship with another person; how a person can be blameworthy for acting against moral reasons even when they were unaware those reasons applied to their moral situation; and how we can have a justified belief in the mental state of another person.

This new addition to Hart Publishing’s Landmark Cases series brings together leading figures in the field to discuss a selection of the most significant cases in medical law. These are cases which either signpost a new development for medical law, illustrate an important development of the law, or signpost likely future developments of the law. The cases are explored in their social and historical context to understand better what has influenced the development of the law. This collection provides a fascinating insight in the interaction of medical law and broader social changes to our bodies, illness and medical professionals.