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Welfare means relationality, virtue and altruism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Jonathan Herring  and
Charles Foster
Jonathan Herring
Affiliation:
Exeter College, University of Oxford
Charles Foster*
Affiliation:
The Ethox Centre and Green Templeton College, University of Oxford
*
*[email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper examines the nature of welfare and best interests as used in medical and family law. It argues that these are commonly presented in individualistic terms, requiring the court to promote the interests of a child or incompetent adult without reference to the interests of others. However, this paper argues that, properly understood, best interests and welfare should be taken as concepts which recognise the importance of relational interests, the performance of obligations, and the virtue of altruism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 480 - 498
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 2012

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References

1. Adoption and Children Act 2002, s 1 similarly provides that when a court or adoption agency is coming to a decision relating to the adoption of a child, ‘[T]he paramount consideration… must be the child's welfare, throughout his life,’ s 1(2). This changed the previous position under the Adoption Act 1976, s 6, by which the child's welfare was the first, but not the paramount, consideration.

2. As has the meaning of best interests in the law governing adults lacking mental capacity, now found in the Mental Capacity Act 2005. For a summary of the current law see Herring, J Medical Law and Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 2010) ch 4Google ScholarPubMed. For detailed discussion of the notions of welfare and best interests see eg JM Eekelaar ‘Beyond the welfare principle’[2002] CFLQ 237; J Herring ‘The Human Rights Act and the welfare principle in family law – conflicting or complementary?’[1999] CFLQ 223; Donnelly, M ‘Determining best interests under the Mental Capacity Act 2005’ (2010) 19 Medical Law Review 27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J Coggon, ‘Doing what's best: organ donation and intensive care’ in Danbury, C et al (eds) Ethics and Law in Critical Care (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

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6. For a discussion of how the courts have managed to attach weight to the interests of others, while holding onto the language of the welfare principle, see Herring, above n 2.

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61. Herring, above n 2.

62. For present purposes we do not seek to probe the motives behind the discharge of an obligation imposed by a relationship. It does not affect our argument if an altruistic act turns out, if one looks hard enough, to be an example of mutually back-scratching reciprocal altruism.

63. See, for instance, Re B (A minor) (wardship: sterilization)[1988] AC 199; Rochdale Healthcare NHS Trust v C[1997] FCR 274.

64. See Foster, above n 40.

65. We accept, though, that the relationship between flourishing and altruism is more complex than we have painted it as being here. A detailed account of that relationship is not, however, relevant to the thesis we are now advancing.

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73. World Medical Association, Declaration of Helsinki (2008).