Post-mortem privacy is becoming a vital topic of public and scholarly legal concern. Post-mortem privacy is understood as the right of a person to preserve and control what becomes of his reputation and dignity after death. The assumption that the deceased does not qualify for privacy rights, because his bodily presence has been terminated, no longer holds in our networked society. In the digital age, the phenomenon of the digital legacy that an Internet user leaves behind after his demise, has (...) led to new challenges for the legal system. The deceased is no longer in a position to exercise human autonomy as an active agent. The article reconsiders the notion of human autonomy with regard to these digital representations. Taking the point of view that the control over personal information is essential in protecting one’s privacy in the antemortem life, the article explores whether this principle may have validity in the postmortem context. Legal philosophical arguments are advanced in a discourse about the quandary if digital personae of deceased persons can be bestowed with a legal basis of personality rights and concomitantly privacy rights. Therefore much attention is given to the problem of the subject, which does not seem to be functioning in the case of the absence of a living subject. Briefly referring to novel personae, it is argued that fundamental human rights need not be limited to the rights of living human beings. (shrink)

In the western healthcare, shared decision making has become the orthodox approach to making healthcare choices as a way of promoting patient autonomy. Despite the fact that the autonomy paradigm is poorly suited to paediatric decision making, such an approach is enshrined in English common law. When reaching moral decisions, for instance when it is unclear whether treatment or non-treatment will serve a child’s best interests, shared decision making is particularly questionable because agreement does not ensure moral validity. With reference (...) to current common law and focusing on intensive care practice, this paper investigates what claims shared decision making may have to legitimacy in a paediatric intensive care setting. Drawing on key texts, I suggest these identify advantages to parents and clinicians but not to the child who is the subject of the decision. Without evidence that shared decision making increases the quality of the decision that is being made, it appears that a focus on the shared nature of a decision does not cohere with the principle that the best interests of the child should remain paramount. In the face of significant pressures toward the displacement of the child’s interests in a shared decision, advantages of a shared decision to decisional quality require elucidation. Although a number of arguments of this nature may have potential, should no such advantages be demonstrable we have cause to revise our commitment to either shared decision making or the paramountcy of the child in these circumstances. (shrink)