The focus of this paper is public health law and ethics, and the analytic framework advanced in the report Public health: ethical issues by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. The author criticises the perceived problems found with liberal models associated with Millian political philosophy and questions the Report’s attempt to add to such theoretical frameworks. The author suggests a stronger theoretical account that the Council could have adopted—that advanced in the works of Joseph Raz—which would have been more appropriate. Instead (...) of seeking to justify overruling the legitimate interests of individuals in favour of society, this account holds that the interests are necessarily interwoven and thus such a conflict does not exist. It is based on an objective moral account and does not require an excessive commitment to individuals’ entitlements. (shrink)

Professional philosophers are members of bioethical committees and regulatory bodies in areas of interest to bioethicists. This suggests they possess moral expertise even if they do not exercise it directly and without constraint. Moral expertise is defined, and four arguments given in support of scepticism about their possession of such expertise are considered and rejected: the existence of extreme disagreement between moral philosophers about moral matters; the lack of a means clearly to identify moral experts; that expertise cannot be claimed (...) in that which lacks objectivity; and that ordinary people do not follow the advice of moral experts.I offer a better reason for scepticism grounded in the relation between moral philosophy and common-sense morality: namely that modern moral philosophy views even a developed moral theory as ultimately anchored in common-sense morality, that set of basic moral precepts which ordinary individuals have command of and use to regulate their own lives.Even if moral philosophers do nevertheless have a limited moral expertise, in that they alone can fully develop a set of moral judgments, I sketch reasons – grounded in the values of autonomy and of democracy – why moral philosophers should not wish non-philosophers to defer to their putative expertise. (shrink)