Criminal liability for fatal errors made by healthcare professionals, medical manslaughter (MM), has prompted much academic and professional debate. There is concern that doctors are increasingly vulnerable to this offence when they make inadvertent clinical errors in complex healthcare systems where mistakes are common and often arise from systemic causes. Yet, these discussions have been dominated by a few appellate court cases and focused on doctors, not victims. This highlights a key data gap and suggests that there may be patterns in MM cases not fully understood. This article analyses 192 MM cases that constitute all known investigations referred to the Crown Prosecution Service between 2007 and 2018. The analysis shows that MM prosecutions are extremely rare but also reveals previously unexplored trends, including high levels of individual advertent faults and deeper structural concerns beyond systemic faults. Although MM remains a contentious offence, attention must also shift to this wider body of cases, which demand approaches extending beyond criminal law and capable of addressing cross-cutting forms of culpability including structural violence. By situating these cases within a broader regulatory context, I demonstrate that MM cases constitute a vital yet underutilized resource for learning and accountability.
This article examines the acute ambiguity in the law governing the deprivation of liberty of children in England and Wales, where protective interventions often rely on judicial direction and on unclear statutory safeguards. It is argued that the current framework is reactive, welfare-driven, and lacking in procedural coherence. Drawing upon Fineman's theory of vulnerability, Fraser's parity of participation, and Lundy's analysis of children's agency in relation to the participatory guarantees of Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the article reconceptualizes vulnerability and rejects the paternalistic protection ethos of the status quo. The article exposes structural gaps in the light of a shifting legal landscape. This backdrop includes the Supreme Court's recent 2026 move away from the rigid, single-determinant tests for confinement towards contextual, multifactorial assessments. It proposes an original statutory architecture: the Children's Liberty Protection Framework (CLPF) that establishes statutory mechanisms of advocacy, review, and oversight at Tribunal level. The CLPF transforms vulnerability from being a control-based condition into a procedural right to participate. As such, it offers a coherent legal pathway for reconciling the challenges posed by the right to liberty and the need to protect children within a supportive and responsive state.
Maternity care in the UK continues to confront profound and systemic failings, despite decades of legal and ethical commitments to patient-centred care. This article demonstrates that these failings are not simply operational or episodic but stem from an entrenched institutional culture of paternalism that routinely suppresses women's autonomy. Drawing on major maternity inquiries alongside empirical studies documenting women's experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, the paper illustrates how women's voices are silenced, alternatives withheld, and concerns minimized-particularly for those from racialized or otherwise marginalized groups. These patterns reveal that autonomy, as currently conceived and practiced, remains largely procedural and illusory. The article argues that the dominant 'individualistic' model of autonomy cannot withstand the relational, emotional, and structural realities of pregnancy and childbirth, nor counter the gendered and hierarchical assumptions embedded within NHS practice. It proposes instead a shift towards a relational understanding of autonomy-one that recognizes vulnerability, prioritizes communication and trust, and situates decision-making within wider social and institutional contexts. Only by transforming the cultural foundations of maternity care can the promise of genuine autonomy and safe, respectful care be realized.
