Medical and Mental Health Law


Stethoscope imageMedical and Mental Health Law have been taught at the LSE for over 10 years, with a strong research component to the teaching being complemented by a focus on the regulation of healthcare.  Both Emily Jackson and Linda Mulcahy have a particular interest in this latter field.   Emily Jackson is Deputy Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and is also Chair of the Authority’s Research Licence Committee. Emily sits on the British Medical Association’s Medical Ethics Committee and on the Ethics Committees of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Pathologists. She is also an Expert Advisor to the Ethics Review procedure of the Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development at the European Commission. Within the LSE, Emily is an Associate Director of the BIOS research centre. Emily teaches a large undergraduate option in medical law, and a smaller LLM course on the regulation of new medical technologies.  For many years, Emily’s research interests were mainly in the fields of reproductive technologies and embryo research, on the one hand, and end of life decision-making, on the other. More recently, Emily’s research has turned to issues raised by the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry.

Mental Health Law at the LSE is taught as a postgraduate option on the LLM and is available to MSc students in Criminal Justice Policy.  There is a longstanding association with the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College and the Department's research and teaching in this field benefits considerably from this interdisciplinary link.  Jill Peay has undertaken research in both the criminal and civil aspects of mental health law, and in the UK and abroad, the latter through her involvement with the Mental Disability Advocacy Centre in Budapest and its multi-country Guardianship project.  She has also contributed to the law reform process both through her work with the Richardson Committee and with the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in their report on Dementia.  Currently, research is being undertaken with colleagues from the Institute of Psychiatry and UCL into unfitness to plead.  This work is being pursued alongside the Law Commission's initiative on insanity and unfitness to plead and is exploring the development of a reliable and dynamic tool to assess fitness to plead. 

 Linda Mulcahy has also written extensively on the regulation of healthcare and has received grants in support of her work from the Department of Health, a number of health authorities and The Lotteries Commission.  Her particular interest has been in the fields of medical mishap and resolution of disputes between doctors and patients.  She has acted as an expert adviser to the Department of Health, the Healthcare Commission, the Commission for the Regulation of Healthcare professionals and as an expert adviser to the Kerr-Haslam, Neal and Ayling Inquiries.  Linda has also been a member of the national Clinical Disputes Forum and the Department of Health's IVI group. She undertook the official evaluation of the NHS Medical Negligence Mediation Pilot scheme and her work on the NHS complaints procedure with the Public law Project has prompted the reform of the procedure. Together with Judith Allsop she was responsible for writing a background paper for the White paper on Clinical Negligence.

 

Faculty


Click on name for biography and research interests:

Professor Emily Jackson

Dr Julie McCandless

Professor Linda Mulcahy

Professor Jill Peay

            

Postgraduate Students


List of current postgraduate research topics:-

Daniel Wang

Email: D.W.Wang@lse.ac.uk

Thesis Title: 'Can explicit health care rationing reduce right to health litigation?: a comparison between Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom.'

Supervisors: Professor Conor Gearty and Dr Thomas Poole

Research Interests: Constitutional Law, Health Policy, Social Rights, and Health Law.

Recent Publications:

Daniel Wei Liang. Courts and Health Care Rationing: the case of the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court. Health Economics, Policy and Law, volume 8, issue 01, pp. 75-93, 2013.

Daniel Wei Liang & Sarah Rizk. Book review of Debating Social Rights by Conor Gearty & Virgina Mantouvalou. European Human Rights Law Review, 4, pp.475-478, 2012.

Daniel Wei Liang & Octavio Luiz Motta Ferraz. Pharmaceutical Companies vs. the State: Who Is Responsible for Post-Trial Provision of Drugs in Brazil? The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 40, pp. 188–196, 2012

 

 

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