The Right to Life and the Value of Life

Jon Yorke, Reader in Law, BCU School of Law, Birmingham City University, UK

Contents: Introduction: the right to life and the value of life: orientations in law, politics and philosophy, Jon Yorke; Part I Approaching the Horizons of Life and Death: Politics and the philosophy of life: towards a normative framework, Mark Olssen; The exemplary exception: philosophical and political decisions in Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer, Andrew Norris; The value of life: somatic ethics and the spirit of biocapital, Nikolas Rose; How we value life: George Bailey and the life not worthy of being lived, Stephen Smith. Part II The Vicissitudes of Armed Conflict and Detention: The right to take life: killing and death in armed conflict, Agnieszka Jachec-Neale; The right to life of detainees in armed conflict, Susan Breau; At the hands of the state: when arrest and imprisonment prove fatal, Caroline Fournet. Part III The Denunciation of the Death Penalty: International criminal justice and the death penalty, Steven Freeland; The right to life and abolition of the death penalty in the Council of Europe, Jon Yorke; The death penalty and Russia, Bill Bowring. Part IV Medical Countenance at the End of Life: Assisted suicide, voluntary euthanasia and the right to life, David Benatar; Positive and negative obligations under the right to life in English medical law: letting patients die, Elizabeth Wicks; Conjoined twins: separation as lethal mutilation, Helen Watt. Part V Access to Medical Treatment and the Preservation of (New) Life: Access to medicines and the right to (cultural) life, Johanna Gibson; Assessing vitality: infertility and 'good life' in urban China, Ayo Wahlberg; Illiberal biopolitics and 'embryonic life': the governance of human embryonic stem cell research in China, Kerstin Klein; Index.