Upcoming events
The Mental Health Act at 40
28 June 2024 | 09:30 | School of Law and Social Justice Building
The Mental Health Act (MHA) 1983 turned 40 last year. That it reached that milestone is remarkable. A judge famously said the Act was ‘out of date’ nearly 20 years ago and calls for its reform have grown louder since then. Despite two independent reviews of the MHA and several attempts to replace it, the 1983 Act remains on the statute book – and increasingly at odds with modern views about mental illness and the rights of persons with disabilities. Although meaningful change looked to be on the cards following the publication of a new Mental Health Bill in 2022, progress has stalled once again – the most recent King’s Speech made no mention of the MHA. The Act’s survival owes much to a lack of consensus about what a reformed MHA might look like – and whether we need it at all.
2024 is a general election year in the UK and a good opportunity to reflect on mental health law and policy in England and Wales. Featuring a programme of academic and professional experts, The Mental Health Act at 40 will examine the MHA’s 40-year legacy and interrogate the most important question for mental health policy: what, if anything, should come next?
- Download the event poster The Mental Health Act at 40 (PDF)
Register for the event
Past event highlights
“Novel Beings”: A Practical Hierarchy for Moral Status (WIP)
2 May 2024 | School of Law and Social Justice Building
Speaker: Dr David Lawrence, Assistant Professor in Biolaw at Durham University.
Emerging biotechnologies including synthetic genomics, developments in cerebral organoid, and future human embryo models are likely to create new forms of morally valuable life. This will pose global challenges for society and for law as regards the status of these ‘novel beings’, their protections, their obligations, and our own. Existing law is proving insufficient to manage the same issues already arising in the context of animal status and personhood cases, leading to ethical and social quandaries (Lawrence, Brazier 2018). This talk will outline the next steps of work I have been developing over a number of years as a founding member of the Novel Beings Network. The core goal is to determine the most pragmatic means of calculating moral standing for both the advent of novel beings and for existing cases around animal personhood, in order to best mitigate the serious challenges for society that these can bring. An important element in this process will be to evaluate the wide range of metrics that may be applicable, including morally significant cognitive capacities, complexity science and emergent consciousness, interests, rationality, responsibility, and relationality. I will (ultimately!) propose a practical hierarchy of moral status that can provide for this need, with an actionable set of standards that can be applied in both law and policy.
Health Law and Regulation Unit - 10 Year Anniversary Conference
28 June 2023 | School of Law and Social Justice Building, University of Liverpool
HLRU hosted an afternoon conference to celebrate its 10-year anniversary, and in the evening, Professor Sally Sheldon, University of Bristol, gave the annual Healthcare Law and Regulation Unit (HLRU) Public Lecture.
Medico-Legal Regulation of Sex and Gender Identities in Childhood
23 November 2022 | Rendall Building, University of Liverpool
A workshop hosted by the Health Law and Regulation Unit, Feminist Legal Research and Action Network, and European Children's Rights Unit.
- Dr Aileen Kennedy, University of New England, presented on 'The Brain-Sex Binary in Law'.
- Dr Fae Gardland, University of Manchester, and Dr Ed Horowicz, University of Liverpool, presented on 'From Clinical to Judicial Decision-Making, and Back Again in Bell v Tavistock? Preparing for the Legacy of Court Involvement in Gender Care for Minors'.
An Uncharitable Alliance: Mermaids v. Charity Commission and LGB Alliance
11 November 2022 | University of Liverpool
In this case, Mermaids (a charity representing and advocating for transgender, nonbinary and gender-diverse children, young people and their families) challenges the charitable status given to the LGB Alliance. Mermaids alleges that ‘LGB Alliance is not actually tackling problems facing lesbian, gay and bisexual people, but rather seeking to prevent the resolution of problems facing transgender persons’.
In other words, they have an ‘anti-trans’ rather than ‘pro-LGB’ focus, with many of their campaigns particularly targeting the affirmation of the gender identity of trans children. This, Mermaids argues, is not a charitable purpose within the meaning of the relevant legislation.
Postgraduate Bioethics Conference (PGBC 2021)
24 - 25 June 2021 | Online
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