Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:33:13.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Migration and access to health care in English medical law: a rhetorical critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2009

John Harrington
John Harrington*
Affiliation:
Professor of Law, The Liverpool Law School, University of Liverpool1
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper develops a rhetorical critique of recent cases on migration and access to health care in Britain. It argues that the national territory, once a taken-for-granted starting point for reasoning in medical law, has lost its common-sense status as a result of neoliberal globalisation. This is evident in recent decisions involving on the one hand HIV-positive asylum seekers coming to the UK and on the other hand British ‘health tourists’ seeking funding for treatment elsewhere in the European Union. Courts are aware that many of these cases are likely to call forth the sympathy of audiences for the individual concerned, further undermining their privileging of the national scale. In curbing this ‘politics of pity’ they adopt a range of persuasive strategies.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 315 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Action Aid (2008) ‘Sponsor a Child Today’, http://www.actionaid.org.uk/100044/sponsor_a_child_today.html [site accessed 17 December 2008].Google Scholar
Aginam, Obijiofor (2000) ‘Global Village – Divided World, South North Gap and Global Health Challenges at Century’s Dawn’, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 7: 603.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah (1973) On Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Aristotle, (1991) The Art of Rhetoric. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Arnold, Patricia (2005) ‘Disciplining Domestic Regulation: The World Trade Organization and the Market for Professional Services’, Accounting, Organizations and Society 30: 299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balkin, Jack (1996) ‘A Night in the Topics: The Reason of Legal Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Legal Reason’, in Brooks, Peter and Gewirtz, Paul (eds) Law’s Stories. New Haven: Yale University Press, 211–24.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland (1994) The Semiotic Challenge. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland (2000) Mythologies. London: Vintage.Google Scholar
Berman, Marshall (1983) All that is Solid Melts into Air. The Experience of Modernity. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Berridge, Virginia (1999) Health and Society in Britain since 1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevan, Aneurin (1978) In Place of Fear. London: Quartet Books.Google Scholar
Blunkett, David (2008) ‘Time to Slash NHS Red Tape’, The Sun, 8 July.Google Scholar
Boltanski, Luc (1993) La souffrance à distance. Morale humanitaire, médias et politique. Paris: Métailié.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (2000) Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, John and Drahos, Peter (2000) Global Business Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brenner, Neil and Theodore, Nik (2002) ‘Cities and the Geographies of “Actually Existing Neoliberalism”’, Antipode 34: 349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Kenneth (1969) A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burris, Scott, Drahos, Peter and Shearing, Clifford (2004) ‘Nodal Governance’, Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 30: 30.Google Scholar
Chanda, Rupa (2002), ‘Trade in Health Services’, Bulletin of the World Health Organization 80: 158.Google ScholarPubMed
Cicero (2001) On the Ideal Orator (De Oratore). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Davies, Margaret (1996) Delimiting the Law. ‘Postmodernism’ and the Politics of Law. London: Pluto.Google Scholar
Dodgson, Richard, Lee, Kelley and Drager, Nick (2002) Global Health Governance. A Conceptual Review, Discussion Paper Paper No.1. Geneva: World Health Organization.Google Scholar
Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1880/1958) The Brothers Karamazov. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Doyal, Lesley (1979) The Political Economy of Health. London: Pluto.Google Scholar
Dupré, Catherine (2006) ‘Human Dignity and Withdrawal of Medical Treatment: A Missed Opportunity?’ European Human Rights Law Review 678.Google Scholar
Elden, Stuart (2004) Understanding Henri Lefebvre. Theory and the Possible. London: Continuum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
European Commission (2008), Proposal for Directive of the European Parliament and Council on the Application of Patient’s Rights in Cross-Border Health Care COM (2008) 414. Brussels.Google Scholar
Foot, Michael (1962) Aneurin Bevan – A Biography. Volume One: 1897–1945. London: MacGibbon & Kee.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1980) Power/Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–77. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy (2005) ‘Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World’, New Left Review 36: 69.Google Scholar
Glyn, Andrew (2007) Capitalism Unleashed. Finance, Globalization and Welfare. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodrich, Peter (1986) Reading the Law. A Critical Introduction to Legal Method and Techniques. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Harrington, John (2002) ‘“Red in Tooth and Claw.” The Idea of Progress in Medicine and the Common Law’, Social and Legal Studies 11: 211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrington, John (2004) ‘“Elective Affinities.” The Art of Medicine and the Common Law’, Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly 55: 259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrington, John (2007) ‘Law, Globalisation and the NHS’, Capital and Class 92: 81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, David (1990) The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Social Change. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Harvey, David (1999) The Limits to Capital, rev. edn. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Harvey, David (2006) Spaces of Global Capitalism. London, Verso.Google Scholar
Healthcare Commission (2007) Annual Report 2006/2007. London: The Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Hervey, Tamara and Mchale, Jean (2004) Health Law and the European Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollander, John (1996) ‘Legal Rhetoric’, in Brooks, Peter and Gewirtz, Paul (eds) Law’s Stories. New Haven: Yale University Press, 176–86.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, Allan (2000) It’s All in the Game. A Non-Foundationalist Account of Law and Adjudication. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jessop, Robert (2002) The Future of the Capitalist State. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Ian (1991) Treat me Right. Essays in Medical Law and Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, Ian and Grubb, Andrew (2000) Medical Law, 3rd edn. London: Butterworths.Google Scholar
Klinck, Dennis (1994) ‘“This Other Eden.” Lord Denning’s Pastoral Vision’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 14: 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kundera, Milan (1985) The Unbearable Lightness of Being. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Henri (1991) The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Levitas, Ruth (2007) ‘Looking for the Blue: The Necessity of Utopia’, Journal of Political Ideologies 12: 289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, David (1984) ‘Adam Smith and the Theatricality of Moral Sentiments’, Critical Inquiry 10: 592.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Michel (1999) Histoire de la rhétorique. Des Grecs à nos jours. Paris: Librarie Générale Française.Google Scholar
Millns, Susan (2002) ‘Death, Dignity and Discrimination: The Case of Pretty v United Kingdom’, German Law Journal 3: 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miola, José (2007) Medical Ethics and Medical Law. A Symbiotic Relationship. Oxford: Hart Publishing.Google Scholar
Murphy, William T (1997) The Oldest Social Science? Configurations of Law and Modernity. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newdick, Christopher (2005) Who Should we Treat? Rights, Rationing and Resources in the NHS. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newdick, Christopher (2006) ‘Citizenship, Free Movement and Health Care: Cementing Individual Rights by Corroding Social Solidarity’, Common Market Law Review 43: 1645.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, Stephanie (2005) ‘Case Comment: AIDS, Expulsion and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights’, European Human Rights Law Review 533.Google Scholar
Piper, Adrian (1991) ‘Impartiality, Compassion and Modal Imagination’, Ethics 101: 726.Google Scholar
Plato (1974) The Republic. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Pollock, Allyson M. (2004) NHS plc. The Privatisation of Our Health Care London: Verso.Google Scholar
Porter, Roy (1997) The Greatest Benefit to Mankind. A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present. London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos (1978) State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Pridmore, Julia Ann and Gammon, John (2007), ‘A Comparative Review of Clinical Governance Arrangements in the UK’, British Journal of Nursing 16: 720.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Quintilian (2001) The Orator’s Education. Books 1–2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Raphael, David D. (2007) The Impartial Spectator. Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, Roy (1965) ‘Ratiocination not Rationalisation’, Mind 74: 463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunstein, Cass (1996) Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Syrett, Keith (2003) ‘A Technocratic Fix to the “Legitimacy Problem”? The Blair Government and Health Care Rationing in the United Kingdom’, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 28: 715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talbot-smith, Alison and Pollock, Allyson M. (2006) The New NHS. A Guide. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teubner, Gunther (1997) ‘The King’s Many Bodies: The Self-Deconstruction of Law’s Hierarchy’, Law and Society Review 31: 763.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
’T hoen, Ellen (2002) ‘TRIPS, Pharmaceutical Patents and Access to Essential Medicines’, Chicago Journal of International Law 3: 27.Google ScholarPubMed
Timmins, Nicholas (2001) The Five Giants. A Biography of the Welfare State, 2nd edn. London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Van Apeldoorn, Bastiaan (2003) ‘The Struggle over European Order: Transnational Class Agency in the Making of “Embedded Neo-Liberalism”’, in Brenner, Neil, Jessop, Robert, Jones, Martin and Macleod, Gordon (eds) State/Space. A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 147–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Viehweg, Theodor (1974) Topik und Jurisprudenz. Ein Beitrag zur rechtswissenschaftlichen Grundlagenforschung, 5th edn. München: CH Beck.Google Scholar
Webster, Charles (2002) The National Health Service. A Political History, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Whitfield, Dexter (2001) Public Services or Corporate Welfare. Rethinking the Nation State in the Global Economy. London: Pluto.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond (1965) The Long Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Wood, Ellen Meiksins (2002) Empire of Capital. London: Verso.Google Scholar