ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses how the judiciary asserts the courts' developing jurisdiction, or power, over ethical issues and controversies arising in medical practice and from developments in biomedical science. The observation that a profession's accommodation of a rights discourse can have the effect of extending its reach provides a useful working hypothesis for thinking through the relationship between human rights and the common law generally, and human rights and the role of the courts in medical law cases specifically. M. Loughlin and Tom Campbell inject some much-needed scepticism into the otherwise celebratory mood that often accompanies the legal positivization of rights and human rights. They both agree that this development has significant consequences for law, politics, and the critical potential of human rights. The chapter attempts to illustrate how Loughlin's and Campbell's analyses of the legal positivization of human rights are directly relevant to an understanding of the nascent relationship between medical law and human rights.
