SURVEYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF MEDICAL LAW: A REASSESSMENT OF GLANVILLE WILLIAMS'S THE SANCTITY OF LIFE AND THE CRIMINAL LAW

摘要

Medical law is now an established and thriving academic discipline. Fifty years ago what is widely regarded as its foundation stone - The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law - was laid by the late Professor Glanville Williams. The book dealt mainly with abortion, infanticide, suicide and euthanasia, but also with contraception, sterilisation and artificial insemination. Its central theme was 'the extent to which human life, actual or potential, is or ought to be protected under the criminal law of the English-speaking peoples'. To the extent that the criminal law reflected the opposition to the above practices in Western medical ethics (the 'inviolability of life' or IOL ethic ), Williams subjected it to a wholesale assault.