Towards a Rhetoric of Medical Law

Challenging the dominant account of medical law as normatively and conceptually subordinate to medical or bio ethics, this book provides an innovative account of medical law as a rhetorical practice Against the idea of a timeless, placeless ethics as the master discipline for medical law, this book demonstrates how judicial and academic reasoning seeks to manage this contingency, through the deployment of rhetorical strategies, persuasive to concrete audiences within specific historical, cultural and political contexts. Informed by social and legal theory, cultural history and literary criticism, John Harrington’s careful reading of key judicial decisions, legislative proposals and academic interventions offer a original, and significant, understanding of medical law.