Jacqueline Laing | University of Cambridge (original) (raw)
Books by Jacqueline Laing
Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence, 2017
The natural law is one of the most enduring of philosophical traditions. By insisting that normat... more The natural law is one of the most enduring of philosophical traditions. By insisting that normativity is based on how things are in fact, the natural law tradition avoids the relativistic implications of the idea that morality is wholly based in features of man's making, whether consensus, feeling, emotion, social construction, convention, performative utterances or human methodology. It promises the possibility of arriving at moral truths by reference to truths of ontology and a metaphysics that is comprehen-sible to human reason. In this, the natural law tradition arguably offers a secure foundation for an understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and vice, and the common good. Although there are bound to be grey areas and borderline cases in the moral domain, the strength of the natural law approach is most evident where paradigms are concerned. In this paper we consider four ethical paradigms: genocide, disproportionate punishment (e.g. capital punishment for misdemeanours), mass live-birth human cloning, and pathologies like bestiality, incest and consensual cannibalism. Ethical dialogue often repairs to clear cases like these when wholesale doubt threatens dominion. Such examples are typically used to sharpen moral concepts, locate ethical limits and explore moral reasoning. Dealing with Clear Cases: Four Ethical Paradigms Consider four paradigms of wrongdoing. I say these are paradigms of wrongdoing not because I want to presuppose the truth of what I am claiming but because these kinds of examples are typically the sort that might be raised in any meta-ethical dialogue. The examples explore the possibility of objectivity in moral reasoning, the rational limits on human freedom, the proper teleological understanding of humans and their place in the world, and a catalogue of other conceptual apparatus traditionally
The Natural Law Tradition has been at the very heart of western ethical, political and jurisprude... more The Natural Law Tradition has been at the very heart of western ethical, political and jurisprudential development. The purpose of the present volume is to collect together a representative and wide-ranging series of readings which fall within the auspices of the oldest and historically most authoritative of these and takes the discussion into the modern world with readings in metaphysics, jurisprudence, politics and ethics. This project, drawing upon the metaphysical and ethical categories most famously stated and developed by Aristotle and Aquinas, has at its core a vision of human nature, both as individual and social, material and immaterial. An exciting foray into the foundations of Western civilisation, the readings offer the reader a focal point for discussion surrounding the natural law tradition.
This book aims to redress the imbalance in moral philosophy created by the dominance of consequen... more This book aims to redress the imbalance in moral philosophy created by the dominance of consequentialism and utilitarianism, the view that criterion of morality is the maximisation of good effects over bad without regard to intrinsic rightness or wrongness. This approach has become the orthodoxy over the last few decades particularly in bioethics, where moral theory is applied to bioethics. Human Lives critically examines the assumptions and arguments of consequentialism reviviing in the process such concepts as rights, justice, innocence, natural integrity, flourishing, the virtues and the fundamental value of human life.
Papers by Jacqueline Laing
The new bioethics, Jul 3, 2019
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, Nov 25, 2011
It would be misleading to assume that “law” relates solely to prescriptions governing the behavio... more It would be misleading to assume that “law” relates solely to prescriptions governing the behavior of human individuals. The term has a far wider sense. It can also refer to a standard or rule that binds things or events. This sense of the term covers the laws of the physical ...
Springer eBooks, Dec 7, 2007
Academic discussion about nutrition and hydration tends to concentrate on conceptual matters intr... more Academic discussion about nutrition and hydration tends to concentrate on conceptual matters intrinsic to the ethics of removing food and fluids in individual cases. It is, for example, undoubtedly important to distinguish between vitalistic and utilitarian excesses in understanding the rights and wrongs of withdrawing food and fluids delivered by tube or by spoon from mentally incapable patients. Vitalism wrongly insists that all must be done to save the life of the incapacitated patient irrespective of the legitimate wishes of the patient, and the cost, effectiveness and physical burden on the patient of the intervention in question. Utilitarian accounts wrongly sacrifice the principle of the inherent dignity of every human being however disabled to a “quality of life” principle insisting that some people lack personhood or have disabilities that suggest that their very lives (as distinct from their treatment) should be regarded as undignified, futile or even over-burdensome. In the context of changing positive law, however, it is important to understand the considerable financial, scientific and medical interests there are in controlling death. These interests need not be illicit in themselves. The interests of hospital and state efficiency, freedom from unnecessary compensation claims, scientific research and increased supplies of organs for transplant are not in themselves wrongful. When understood in the context of law that invites bureaucratised homicide and serious mutilation of the non-consenting or ill-informed vulnerable, these interests introduce new extrinsic concerns. There is every reason to believe that a proper analysis of this ethico-legal terrain demands a comprehensive inquiry into wider matters sometimes wrongly rejected as consequentialist. Failure to identify these broader interests and their moral limits might well lead one to a conceptual failure to see the wood for the trees. England and Wales has seen radical alteration of the law of homicide and assault. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (which comes into force in 2007) will soon
Journal of Medical Ethics, Apr 1, 2003
Journal of Criminal Law, Feb 1, 1990
In a recent article in the Journal of Criminal Law, 1 Jeremy Horder argues in favour of a new def... more In a recent article in the Journal of Criminal Law, 1 Jeremy Horder argues in favour of a new defence of mercy killing to a charge of aiding and abetting suicide. He suggests that "[i]f there is no reason to stigmatise as criminal reasonable actions motivated by fear or serious violence or understandable rage, then the same should be true of reasonable actions motivated by understandable compassion.'? The purpose of this paper is to show that Horder's conclusion is reached on the basis of some questionable assumptions about the role of motives in the substantive criminal law. To the extent that Horder favours a complete defence of mercy-killing to the offence of aiding and abetting suicide, the argument does not succeed; to the extent that the weaker claim holds, i.e. that emotions may in some circumstances overwhelm a person and that provision should be made for reduction of sentences of those who act in a profound state of anxiety, there is no reason to suppose that we should accept Horder's conclusion. Recent trends in the House of Lords demonstrate a shift away from new defences to crimes committed intentionally. Most recent expressions of this may be seen in Howe' and may be observed generally in a series of decisions of the House of Lords after Moloney:" In England a specially enacted offence provides for reduced penalties in cases of aiding and abetting another's suicides In Beecham's case" the accused assisted his daughter to commit suicide by connecting a hose from the exhaust of her car to its
Social Science Research Network, 2005
This article challenges the view most recently expounded by Emily Jackson that 'decisional privac... more This article challenges the view most recently expounded by Emily Jackson that 'decisional privacy' ought to be respected in the realm of artificial reproduction (AR). On this view, it is considered an unjust infringement of individual liberty for the state to interfere with individual or group freedom artificially to produce a child. It is our contention that a proper evaluation of AR and of the relevance of welfare will be sensitive not only to the rights of 'commissioning parties' to AR but also to public policy considerations. We argue that AR has implications for the common good, by involving matters of human reproduction, kinship, race, parenthood and identity. In this paper we challenge presuppositions concerning decisional privacy. We examine the essential commodification of human life implicit in AR and the systematicity that makes this possible. We address the objection that it is an ethically neutral way of having children and consider the problem of 'existential debt'. After examining objections to the thesis that AR is illegitimate for reasons of public policy and the common good, we return to the issue of decisional privacy in the light of considerations concerning the legitimate role of the state in matters affecting human reproduction. It is becoming increasingly common to discover theorists championing the view that 'decisional privacy' ought to be respected in questions of artificial reproduction (AR). 1 It is considered to be an unjust infringement
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997
... has the same rights as an X.16 First, no one seriously suggests that a human foetus should ha... more ... has the same rights as an X.16 First, no one seriously suggests that a human foetus should have the ... lives, and so to assert that we need not ascribe to foetuses the kinds of rights we do to ... which could provide a basis for holding that it is wrong to kill one being and replace it with ...
European Journal of Health Law, Jul 2, 2009
Th e United Kingdom's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, introduced into Parliament on the ... more Th e United Kingdom's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, introduced into Parliament on the 8th of November 2007 contains a number of controversial proposals inter alia expressly permitting the creation of inter-species embryos for research and destruction and increasing the scope for human cloning also for destructive research. It is supposed that there ought not to be a blanket ban on the creation of human clones, hybrids, cybrids and chimeras because these embryos are valuable for research purposes. Th e prohibition on the gestation of non-permitted embryos and interspecies embryos is used to generate confi dence that embryos with compromised origins would not be gestated and reared. Th e argument outlined here demonstrates how uncertain are any legal prohibitions on gestation. Accordingly, the practical import of the distinction between compromised embryos for research and the same for live birth is equally dubious. Th e legislation would not, on this analysis, supply eff ective controls over this reproductive technology.
The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Ethics, 2019
The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence, 2017
espanolLa prohibicion de la eugenesia es bien conocida en el derecho internacional. La Carta de l... more espanolLa prohibicion de la eugenesia es bien conocida en el derecho internacional. La Carta de los Derechos Fundamentales de la Union Europea, por ejemplo, prohibe, inter alia, la eugenesia. Muchos otros instrumentos juridicos sugieren que la eugenesia es ilicita. A pesar de esto, hay quienes rechazan el uso de la terminologia comun relativa a la eutanasia como, en el mejor de los casos, sin sentido y, en el peor, como una interferencia ilegitima con el progreso cientifico y con el ejercicio de la libertad personal. Hay otros que sostienen que, aunque indudablemente hay mala eugenesia, no toda eugenesia es mala. La nueva eugenesia, afirman, no es como su antepasada moralmente insolvente, pues no es coercitiva, no tiene vinculos con el nazismo y es benigna. Este articulo examina semejantes pretensiones, explicando que el uso del termino eugenesia ni es sin sentido ni es tan estrecho que resulte banal. En la medida en que alienta el que los intereses de la ciencia y de la sociedad es...
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 2011
Byzantine emperor, born in 483 at Tauresium in Illyricum (now Skopje, Macedonia). He is best reme... more Byzantine emperor, born in 483 at Tauresium in Illyricum (now Skopje, Macedonia). He is best remembered for his codification of laws, military acumen, ecclesiastical contribution, and encouragement of Christian architecture. In the Orthodox Church he is regarded a saint, whose feast day falls on November 14th. Keywords: justinian's legacy, his codification of laws; military acumen, ecclesiastical contribution; one-time church of our lady and Hagia Sophia
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 2011
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 2011
Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence, 2017
The natural law is one of the most enduring of philosophical traditions. By insisting that normat... more The natural law is one of the most enduring of philosophical traditions. By insisting that normativity is based on how things are in fact, the natural law tradition avoids the relativistic implications of the idea that morality is wholly based in features of man's making, whether consensus, feeling, emotion, social construction, convention, performative utterances or human methodology. It promises the possibility of arriving at moral truths by reference to truths of ontology and a metaphysics that is comprehen-sible to human reason. In this, the natural law tradition arguably offers a secure foundation for an understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and vice, and the common good. Although there are bound to be grey areas and borderline cases in the moral domain, the strength of the natural law approach is most evident where paradigms are concerned. In this paper we consider four ethical paradigms: genocide, disproportionate punishment (e.g. capital punishment for misdemeanours), mass live-birth human cloning, and pathologies like bestiality, incest and consensual cannibalism. Ethical dialogue often repairs to clear cases like these when wholesale doubt threatens dominion. Such examples are typically used to sharpen moral concepts, locate ethical limits and explore moral reasoning. Dealing with Clear Cases: Four Ethical Paradigms Consider four paradigms of wrongdoing. I say these are paradigms of wrongdoing not because I want to presuppose the truth of what I am claiming but because these kinds of examples are typically the sort that might be raised in any meta-ethical dialogue. The examples explore the possibility of objectivity in moral reasoning, the rational limits on human freedom, the proper teleological understanding of humans and their place in the world, and a catalogue of other conceptual apparatus traditionally
The Natural Law Tradition has been at the very heart of western ethical, political and jurisprude... more The Natural Law Tradition has been at the very heart of western ethical, political and jurisprudential development. The purpose of the present volume is to collect together a representative and wide-ranging series of readings which fall within the auspices of the oldest and historically most authoritative of these and takes the discussion into the modern world with readings in metaphysics, jurisprudence, politics and ethics. This project, drawing upon the metaphysical and ethical categories most famously stated and developed by Aristotle and Aquinas, has at its core a vision of human nature, both as individual and social, material and immaterial. An exciting foray into the foundations of Western civilisation, the readings offer the reader a focal point for discussion surrounding the natural law tradition.
This book aims to redress the imbalance in moral philosophy created by the dominance of consequen... more This book aims to redress the imbalance in moral philosophy created by the dominance of consequentialism and utilitarianism, the view that criterion of morality is the maximisation of good effects over bad without regard to intrinsic rightness or wrongness. This approach has become the orthodoxy over the last few decades particularly in bioethics, where moral theory is applied to bioethics. Human Lives critically examines the assumptions and arguments of consequentialism reviviing in the process such concepts as rights, justice, innocence, natural integrity, flourishing, the virtues and the fundamental value of human life.
The new bioethics, Jul 3, 2019
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, Nov 25, 2011
It would be misleading to assume that “law” relates solely to prescriptions governing the behavio... more It would be misleading to assume that “law” relates solely to prescriptions governing the behavior of human individuals. The term has a far wider sense. It can also refer to a standard or rule that binds things or events. This sense of the term covers the laws of the physical ...
Springer eBooks, Dec 7, 2007
Academic discussion about nutrition and hydration tends to concentrate on conceptual matters intr... more Academic discussion about nutrition and hydration tends to concentrate on conceptual matters intrinsic to the ethics of removing food and fluids in individual cases. It is, for example, undoubtedly important to distinguish between vitalistic and utilitarian excesses in understanding the rights and wrongs of withdrawing food and fluids delivered by tube or by spoon from mentally incapable patients. Vitalism wrongly insists that all must be done to save the life of the incapacitated patient irrespective of the legitimate wishes of the patient, and the cost, effectiveness and physical burden on the patient of the intervention in question. Utilitarian accounts wrongly sacrifice the principle of the inherent dignity of every human being however disabled to a “quality of life” principle insisting that some people lack personhood or have disabilities that suggest that their very lives (as distinct from their treatment) should be regarded as undignified, futile or even over-burdensome. In the context of changing positive law, however, it is important to understand the considerable financial, scientific and medical interests there are in controlling death. These interests need not be illicit in themselves. The interests of hospital and state efficiency, freedom from unnecessary compensation claims, scientific research and increased supplies of organs for transplant are not in themselves wrongful. When understood in the context of law that invites bureaucratised homicide and serious mutilation of the non-consenting or ill-informed vulnerable, these interests introduce new extrinsic concerns. There is every reason to believe that a proper analysis of this ethico-legal terrain demands a comprehensive inquiry into wider matters sometimes wrongly rejected as consequentialist. Failure to identify these broader interests and their moral limits might well lead one to a conceptual failure to see the wood for the trees. England and Wales has seen radical alteration of the law of homicide and assault. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (which comes into force in 2007) will soon
Journal of Medical Ethics, Apr 1, 2003
Journal of Criminal Law, Feb 1, 1990
In a recent article in the Journal of Criminal Law, 1 Jeremy Horder argues in favour of a new def... more In a recent article in the Journal of Criminal Law, 1 Jeremy Horder argues in favour of a new defence of mercy killing to a charge of aiding and abetting suicide. He suggests that "[i]f there is no reason to stigmatise as criminal reasonable actions motivated by fear or serious violence or understandable rage, then the same should be true of reasonable actions motivated by understandable compassion.'? The purpose of this paper is to show that Horder's conclusion is reached on the basis of some questionable assumptions about the role of motives in the substantive criminal law. To the extent that Horder favours a complete defence of mercy-killing to the offence of aiding and abetting suicide, the argument does not succeed; to the extent that the weaker claim holds, i.e. that emotions may in some circumstances overwhelm a person and that provision should be made for reduction of sentences of those who act in a profound state of anxiety, there is no reason to suppose that we should accept Horder's conclusion. Recent trends in the House of Lords demonstrate a shift away from new defences to crimes committed intentionally. Most recent expressions of this may be seen in Howe' and may be observed generally in a series of decisions of the House of Lords after Moloney:" In England a specially enacted offence provides for reduced penalties in cases of aiding and abetting another's suicides In Beecham's case" the accused assisted his daughter to commit suicide by connecting a hose from the exhaust of her car to its
Social Science Research Network, 2005
This article challenges the view most recently expounded by Emily Jackson that 'decisional privac... more This article challenges the view most recently expounded by Emily Jackson that 'decisional privacy' ought to be respected in the realm of artificial reproduction (AR). On this view, it is considered an unjust infringement of individual liberty for the state to interfere with individual or group freedom artificially to produce a child. It is our contention that a proper evaluation of AR and of the relevance of welfare will be sensitive not only to the rights of 'commissioning parties' to AR but also to public policy considerations. We argue that AR has implications for the common good, by involving matters of human reproduction, kinship, race, parenthood and identity. In this paper we challenge presuppositions concerning decisional privacy. We examine the essential commodification of human life implicit in AR and the systematicity that makes this possible. We address the objection that it is an ethically neutral way of having children and consider the problem of 'existential debt'. After examining objections to the thesis that AR is illegitimate for reasons of public policy and the common good, we return to the issue of decisional privacy in the light of considerations concerning the legitimate role of the state in matters affecting human reproduction. It is becoming increasingly common to discover theorists championing the view that 'decisional privacy' ought to be respected in questions of artificial reproduction (AR). 1 It is considered to be an unjust infringement
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997
... has the same rights as an X.16 First, no one seriously suggests that a human foetus should ha... more ... has the same rights as an X.16 First, no one seriously suggests that a human foetus should have the ... lives, and so to assert that we need not ascribe to foetuses the kinds of rights we do to ... which could provide a basis for holding that it is wrong to kill one being and replace it with ...
European Journal of Health Law, Jul 2, 2009
Th e United Kingdom's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, introduced into Parliament on the ... more Th e United Kingdom's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, introduced into Parliament on the 8th of November 2007 contains a number of controversial proposals inter alia expressly permitting the creation of inter-species embryos for research and destruction and increasing the scope for human cloning also for destructive research. It is supposed that there ought not to be a blanket ban on the creation of human clones, hybrids, cybrids and chimeras because these embryos are valuable for research purposes. Th e prohibition on the gestation of non-permitted embryos and interspecies embryos is used to generate confi dence that embryos with compromised origins would not be gestated and reared. Th e argument outlined here demonstrates how uncertain are any legal prohibitions on gestation. Accordingly, the practical import of the distinction between compromised embryos for research and the same for live birth is equally dubious. Th e legislation would not, on this analysis, supply eff ective controls over this reproductive technology.
The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Ethics, 2019
The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence, 2017
espanolLa prohibicion de la eugenesia es bien conocida en el derecho internacional. La Carta de l... more espanolLa prohibicion de la eugenesia es bien conocida en el derecho internacional. La Carta de los Derechos Fundamentales de la Union Europea, por ejemplo, prohibe, inter alia, la eugenesia. Muchos otros instrumentos juridicos sugieren que la eugenesia es ilicita. A pesar de esto, hay quienes rechazan el uso de la terminologia comun relativa a la eutanasia como, en el mejor de los casos, sin sentido y, en el peor, como una interferencia ilegitima con el progreso cientifico y con el ejercicio de la libertad personal. Hay otros que sostienen que, aunque indudablemente hay mala eugenesia, no toda eugenesia es mala. La nueva eugenesia, afirman, no es como su antepasada moralmente insolvente, pues no es coercitiva, no tiene vinculos con el nazismo y es benigna. Este articulo examina semejantes pretensiones, explicando que el uso del termino eugenesia ni es sin sentido ni es tan estrecho que resulte banal. En la medida en que alienta el que los intereses de la ciencia y de la sociedad es...
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 2011
Byzantine emperor, born in 483 at Tauresium in Illyricum (now Skopje, Macedonia). He is best reme... more Byzantine emperor, born in 483 at Tauresium in Illyricum (now Skopje, Macedonia). He is best remembered for his codification of laws, military acumen, ecclesiastical contribution, and encouragement of Christian architecture. In the Orthodox Church he is regarded a saint, whose feast day falls on November 14th. Keywords: justinian's legacy, his codification of laws; military acumen, ecclesiastical contribution; one-time church of our lady and Hagia Sophia
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 2011
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 2011
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 2011
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 2011
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 2011