We are pleased to announce that Dr Ira Chadha-Sridhar, our Hatton-WYNG Junior Research Fellow, will publish her forthcoming book Care and the Mandate of Medical Law with Oxford University Press as part of its Oxford Legal Philosophy series.
Medical professionals are bound by the expectation that they will exercise a reasonable duty of care when treating patients, the breach of which gives rise to liability in medical negligence law. In her monograph, Ira seeks to clarify the content of this duty by addressing foundational questions: What exactly does this duty require? What must medical professionals subject to it do—and what must they refrain from doing?
Ira adopts a fresh and nuanced approach to the doctrine of duty of care by introducing a new lens: care ethics—a moral philosophy with feminist roots—with which she develops a conceptual framework of caring actions and “care-failures”, using it to elucidate the nature of obligations and breaches in medical law. Applying this framework, she revisits the longstanding debates such as those concerning deference to medical expertise.
On this account, the duty imposed on medical professionals is a particular instance of our broader moral duties to care for others: at its core, it is a duty to perform caring actions adequately and to avoid committing specific care-failures. The aim of the book is thus to provide a clear direction for legal reform, while simultaneously introducing care ethics as a valuable new lens through which to approach foundational legal questions.
“I am delighted that the book has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press, as part of their Oxford Legal Philosophy series - a series whose volumes I have often read and drawn inspiration from throughout my work. I am grateful for the generous support I have received for this project from the Hatton-WYNG Trust, the Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences, and my colleagues at Hughes Hall,” Ira said.
We’re delighted to see Dr Chadha-Sridhar’s work in print and proud to see it making an important contribution to the field of medical law and philosophy.