Biography
Biography
Amel Alghrani
Amel Alghrani was called to the Bar in 2003 having been awarded a Scholarship from Inner Temple. Following working in the General Medical Council she went into academia and undertook a PhD examining the regulation of assisted reproductive technologies. In her subsequent research roles as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Science Ethics and Innovation (headed by Nobel Laureate Sir John Sulston and Professor John Harris) and as a Research Associate at the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy (headed by Professors Margaret Brazier and Soren Holm, University of Manchester) she extensively researched this field. She then went on to hold a Lectureship at the University of Manchester before moving into her current role as a Senior Lecturer in Medical Law at the University of Liverpool School of Law & Social Justice. She is also the Director of The Health Law & Regulation Unit.
Gordon Ashton OBE
Gordon Ashton OBE qualified as a solicitor in 1967 after gaining LL.B (Hons) at Manchester University in 1964. He was appointed a District Judge at Preston in 1992 after 28 years of general legal practice in Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria. He became a Deputy Master of the former Court of Protection in 2001 to hear cases in the north of England and then a nominated judge of the (new) Court of Protection. Before retiring in 2012 he was a Visiting Professor at Northumbria University, patron of Solicitors for the Elderly, vice-president of Association of Law Costs Draftsmen and tutor judge at the Judicial College (formerly Judicial Studies Board). He was a part-time Chair of Social Security Appeals Tribunal (1985-2001).
He has written and lectured extensively on topics concerned with older and disabled people and the law. Books include Mental Handicap and the Law (1992), Law Society’s Elderly Client Handbook (1995), Elderly People and the Law (1995, 2nd ed 2014), Butterworths Older Client Law Service (looseleaf), Mental Capacity – The New Law (2006), Mental Capacity – Law & Practice (2012). He is general editor of Court of Protection Practice 2014 and has contributed to many othervolumes including Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents, Atkins Court Forms and Butterworths Wills Probate and Administration Service.
In 2010 he was awarded the OBE for “Services to the Administration of Justice and to Disabled People”.
Beverley Clough
Beverley Cloughundertook her LLB and MA in Health Care Ethics and Law at the University of Manchester. In January 2012 she began studying for her PhD in Bioethics and Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Manchester. Her thesis focussed on the Mental Capacity Act 2005, looking at whether the law reflects the lived reality for those deemed to lack capacity and their carers, and considering theoretical perspectives on the rights of people with disabilities. This was funded through a teaching Scholarship, and Beverley taught Tort law and Medical law during her time at Manchester. Beverley is now a Lecturer in the School of Law and Social Justice at the University of Liverpool.
Emma Cave
Dr Emma Cave (Twitter: @cave555) is a Reader in Law at Durham Law School, where she is Director of the Centre for Ethics Law and the Life Sciences (https://www.dur.ac.uk/law/staff/?id=11717 ). Specialising in Medical Law, she is currently working with Professor Margaret Brazier on the sixth edition of their textbook, Medicine, Patients and the Law. Her principal research interest is capacity and consent to medical treatment and healthcare research. Cave concluded a project on adolescent consent to medical treatment (funded by the Nuffield Foundation) in 2013 (http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/adolescents-and-informed-consent).
Paula Case
Paula Case is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law and Social Justice at the University of Liverpool and teaches in the fields of medical law, tort law and law in literature and film. She undertook a Phd in environmental regulation and has published research in the fields of: enforcement of environmental crime; regulation of the medical profession (particularly ‘fitness to practise’ decision making by the General Medical Council and Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service); liability for psychiatric damage. She also authored a book on Compensating Child Abuse in England and Wales with Cambridge University Press and currently co-edits the journal Medical Law International.
John Coggon
John Coggon is Professor of Law and the Philosophy of Public Health at the University of Southampton. His primary teaching and research interests concern law and policy as they impact on human health and welfare, with a particular focus on the interplays of legal, moral, and political concerns. He has engaged in various projects concerning the theory and application of mental capacity law, published in journals including the British Medical Journal, the Cambridge Law Journal, and Health Care Analysis. His leading work, the book "What Makes Health Public?" (Cambridge University Press, 2012), provides a comprehensive analysis of the moral and political foundations of health law and policy.
Mary Donnelly
Dr Mary Donnelly is a Senior Lecturer at the Law Faculty, University College Cork. She is the author of Consent: Bridging the Gap Between Doctor and Patient (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002) and Healthcare Decision-Making and the Law: Autonomy, Capacity and the Limits of Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) and co-author of End-of-Life Care: Ethics and Law (Cork University Press, 2011) as well as articles/essays on medical and mental health law. She was a member of the Department of Health Expert Group to review the Mental Health Act 2001 (2011-2014) and the National Consent Advisory Group for the development of the Health Service Executive National Consent Policy (2012-2013).
Philip Fennell
Phil Fennell is a Professor of Law at Cardiff University School of Law and Politics, where he teaches Public Law, Consent to Treatment, and Law and Psychiatry. He is author of Treatment without Consent: Law, Psychiatry and the Treatment of Mentally Disordered People without Consent since 1845 Routledge (1996). He served on the Mental Health Act Commission from 1983-1989. In 2004-5 Phil was specialist legal adviser to the Joint Parliamentary Scrutiny Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill 2004, and in 2006-7 to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights on the Mental Health Bill 2006. He co-edited Principles of Mental Health Law and Policy 2010 Oxford University Press (with Professors Larry Gostin, Peter Bartlett, Jean Mc Hale, and Ronnie Mackay) and wrote ten chapters in the book. His latest books are Mental Health: Law and Practice (2nd Edition) published by Jordans in April 2011, and (with Penny Letts and Jonathan Wilson) Mental Health Tribunals: Law, Policy and Practice, published by the Law Society in April 2013. He is currently working with Dr Lucy Series on a Nuffield funded research project on health and welfare decisions in the Court of Protection, and on a new edition of Treatment without Consent.
Alex Keene
Alex been recommended as a leading expert in the field of mental capacity law for several years, appearing in cases involving the MCA 2005 at all levels up to and including the Supreme Court. He also writes extensively about mental capacity law and policy, works to which he has contributed including ‘The Court of Protection Handbook’ (2014, LAG); ‘The International Protection of Adults’ (2015, Oxford University Press), Jordan’s ‘Court of Protection Practice’ and the third edition of ‘Assessment of Mental Capacity’ (Law Society/BMA 2009). He is an Honorary Research Lecturer at the University of Manchester, and the creator of the website www.mentalcapacitylawandpolicy.org.uk.
Lucy Series
Lucy Series is a research associate at Cardiff Law School. She is working with Phil Fennell on a project about the Court of Protection, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Lucy's doctoral thesis was about the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the deprivation of liberty safeguards. Her research interests include legal capacity, deprivation of liberty and social care law. Lucy writes a blog about social care and capacity law, called The Small Places
Paul Skowron
Paul Skowron is a doctoral candidate at the University of Manchester. His research examines substituted and supported decision-making through the lens of virtue ethics.
Robert Wheeler
Mr Robert Wheeler is a Consultant Paediatric & Neonatal Surgeon at the University Hospitals of Southampton (UHS); his main surgical interest is in paediatric oncology surgery, and the techniques of tumour dissection. He chaired the Surgical Section of the UK’s Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group (CCLG) 2009-2011.
He is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Clinical Law, with particular legal interests in consent and confidentiality in children, and mental capacity in adults.. He has published widely on the inconsistencies between these legal rules and the realities of medical practice, as well as difficulties in adherence to the law in some special situations in which consent is required. His (current) PhD research relates to the applicability of the legal doctrine res ipsa loquitur to the standard of care in operative surgery. He has contributed to a wide range of legal and medical textbooks.
Mr Wheeler has sat on the Ethics Committee of the British Medical Journal and chaired the Ethics and Law Committee of the RCPCH. He remains chairman of his local Clinical Ethics Committee, and that of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons. He is the Director of the Department of Clinical Law at UHS, the first such clinical department in the NHS.