ABSTRACT
In the opening quote, we witness judicial disavowal of the notion of the monster. The context for this utterance was counsel’s suggestion that Jodie and Mary, the conjoined twins in the case, might constitute a monster.2 This legal argument, along with others, was designed to support an application for medical separation of the twins.3 In particular, it sought to remove doctors performing such an operation from the possibility of a homicide charge.4 According to English criminal law, a homicide charge requires the prosecution to prove, among other things, that the person killed was ‘a reasonable person in being’ (Clarkson and Keating, 1994, p 594). If Jodie and Mary were to be viewed as a monster then there would be no reasonable person in being capable of being killed according to English law. In rejecting the argument that conjoined twins constituted a monster, the court insisted that the concept of the monster was no longer part of English law. While recognising the existence of legal precedent for the opposite conclusion in the legal commentaries of Bracton (1240-1260 (1968)); Coke (1628-1644 (1979)) and Blackstone (1765-1769 (1979)),5 and
therefore legal authority spanning six centuries, the court dismissed the idea that the notion of the monster might bear any contemporary significance. It would seem that in English law the concept of the monster is now, if it was not already, legally dead.
