The publication of a report into a case where an organ donor's constraints on the race of potential recipients raises questions about whether respect for autonomy or communitarianism should prevail in altruistic medical procedures. This article briefly reviews how autonomy and communitarianism are balanced in cadaveric and live organ donation, bone marrow donation, gamete donation, blood donation and vaccination. It criticises vaccination policy for ostensibly respecting patient autonomy yet in practice compromising that autonomy in various ways. Vaccination is properly viewed as an altruistic medical procedure because some vaccines are of more good to society than to the vaccinee, who runs associated health risks. The conclusion is that there is a spectrum of attitudes to the value of autonomy, depending principally upon the invasiveness of the procedure. In most cases the autonomy-communitarianism balance is satisfactory, but this is not so in respect of cadaveric organ donation and vaccination. The article proposes that cadaveric organ donation should be governed by the communitarian law of well-publicised presumed consent. It proposes two alternatives for vaccination: that vaccination should be compulsory or, preferably, that procedures be modified so that parents have real autonomy in their decisions whether to vaccinate their children.

This article explores how the law of England and Wales1 has responded thus far to medical and clinical advances that have enabled patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness to survive. The authors argue that, although the courts have taken account of much of the science, they are now lagging behind, with the result that some patients are being denied their legal rights under the Mental Capacity Act 2005. The article further argues that English law does not comply with the United Kingdom’s commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Stressing the need for the law to keep in step with advances in science, the article concludes with robust recommendations for improvements, based on the latest research in neuroscience, to the way in which life-sustaining treatment decisions are made. This would mean that the wishes of patients, including those with covert awareness, can be better reflected in best interests assessments.

No abstract

During 2020, weddings were profoundly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. During periods of lockdown few weddings could take place, and even afterwards restrictions on how they could be celebrated remained. To investigate the impact of such restrictions, we carried out a survey of those whose plans to marry in England and Wales had been affected by Covid-19. The 1,449 responses we received illustrated that the ease and speed with which couples had been able to marry, and sometimes whether they had been able to marry at all, had depended not merely on the national restrictions in place but on their chosen route into marriage. This highlights the complexity and antiquity of marriage law and reinforces the need for reform. The restrictions on weddings taking place also revealed the extent to which couples valued getting married as opposed to having a wedding. Understanding both the social and the legal dimension of weddings is important in informing recommendations as to how the law should be changed in the future, not merely to deal with similar crises but also to ensure that the general law is fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.

Personal rights of the citizen -Right to life of the unborn child -Conflict between rights - Ireland, art 40.3.1 and 40.3.3.