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Semester 2

Contemporary Issues in Medical Jurisprudence (LAWS10165)

Subject

Law

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 3 Law courses at grade B or above, including a sound background in Delict, Contract, Property & Human Rights Law, and ideally also including a course equivalent to Fundamental Issues in Medical Jurisprudence (LAWS10166). We will only consider University/College level courses. This course is only open to visiting students who are nominated to study with us on a Law exchange agreement. Exchange students outside of Law and study abroad students are not eligible to enrol on this course before teaching begins, with no exceptions, and spaces cannot be guaranteed to those students at any time. **Please see Additional Restrictions**

Course Summary

This course is designed to engage students with current live issues arising in the field of medical jurisprudence, being a disciplines which sits at the cross-roads between law, medicine and ethics, and which is concerned primarily with legal and social responses to advances in medicine, healthcare, science and related technologies. The course is deliberately designed to be open and responsive to issues that are current at the time of delivery in any given year. Accordingly, only broad indications as to topics and subject matter can be given is a description such as this. Likely issues to be covered include: (a) start and end of life; (b) human genetics and biotechnologies; (c) regulation of medical research; (d) human enhancement; (e) gender identity at the intersection of law and medical practice. **The main aims of the course are: - To equip students with deep and highly-responsive critical faculties to address medical and technical advances where the legal response is as yet under-developed or manifestly inadequate; - To expose students to cutting-edge research approaches in medical jurisprudence allied to the work of the School of Law and its Mason Institute in order to develop appropriate skills for a new generation of medical lawyers and ethicists; - To explore new ways of critiquing, understanding and shaping our legal and social responses to advance in medicine, healthcare, science and related technologies.

Course Description

Given the deliberately open and responsive nature of this course, it would be inappropriate to attempt to give concrete topics. The topics will be chosen with the class in any given year under the oversight and direction of the course teachers. A broad indication of contemporary live topics will be introduced by the course teachers and it will be for students to decide amongst themselves which areas they would like to explore further. Suggestions and proposals will be invited from the students. Group interaction in this process will be encouraged and this will then be used as a means to take learning forward. Groups will be assisted to choose topics, develop materials, prepare to lead on seminar discussions, and to encourage mutual learning. The first few sessions will be led by staff as exemplars of the kinds of critical approaches and insights that can be explored. Skills development is central the course and will form an early part of the course interaction. **Thus, the overall outline of the course will have the following format: Part 1: Skills development (Seminars 1-4) - 1. Introduction: the course, expectations, likely topics and group selection; 2. Final topics discussion and selection; 3. Discussion of preliminary course handouts from all groups; 4. Key skills development in critical thinking: staff-led seminar example. Part 2: Exploring contemporary issues (Seminars 5-10) - The latter half of this course will consist of the student-led group seminars. **Expectations for each student-led ground seminar include: a. Group-led seminar based on student-prepared course handout and reading material to be distributed in advance (hence topic and group selection in Week 2 and reading material distributed in Week 3); b. Clear allocation of responsibility within the group for preparation and delivery of seminar (decided and managed by group); c. Full participation in discussion by all, encouraged through participation assessment via student blogs (x 4); d. Clear objectives and conclusions to be prepared by group.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

**All 3rd year Law courses are ONLY open to visiting students nominated on an exchange agreement within the School of Law (including Erasmus students on a Law-specific exchange). Exchange students outside of Law, and independent study abroad students, are not eligible to enrol in these courses, with no exceptions.** Please note that 3rd year Law courses are high-demand, meaning that they have a very high number of students wishing to enrol in a very limited number of spaces. These enrolments are managed strictly by the CAHSS Visiting Student Office, in line with the quotas allocated by the department, and all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. It is not appropriate for students to contact the Law School directly to request additional spaces. If there is sufficient space for other visiting students to enrol at the start of the semester (which cannot be guaranteed at all), visiting students must meet the pre-requisites listed above.

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