Medical practitioners have a statutory duty to notify the coroner, where the doctor suspects a ‘notifiable cause’ of death and where one considers a death ‘suspicious’, the police must also be informed immediately. This chapter explores the duties of the medical examiner and the duty of the coroner to investigate.

In the late 1970s, queer parents increasingly fought to maintain custody of their children from different-sex relationships. These mothers and fathers were responding in part to the gay liberation movement, which inspired them to come out and demand their rights. Also important was that the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental illness, which eliminated what had been an all-but-impenetrable barrier to custody. Courts were nevertheless reluctant to grant these petitions, fearing that the children would learn to be gay or lesbian from the adults in their lives. In response to these court cases, social scientists developed research studies that concluded parental homosexuality had no effect on the future sexual orientation of children. Based on that work, family courts around the country granted custody to lesbian mothers and gay fathers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, creating the first wave of visible queer-headed families.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with a range of adverse outcomes. One of many potential adverse trajectories for those with ADHD is involvement in criminal offending. Meta-analyses have reported increased prevalence rates of ADHD in youth and adult offender populations. The prevalence of comorbid disorders in offender populations is common, but this appears to be increased in those with ADHD, which in turn complicates diagnosis and treatment. This chapter outlines the prevalence of ADHD in offender populations and considers gender and cultural effects. The relationship between ADHD and criminal offending is discussed, including the onset and type of offending, recidivism, progress within institutional establishments, comorbidity and long-term consequences. theoretical frameworks for understanding the association between ADHD and criminal offending are also considered. The chapter also highlights the economic consequences of ADHD within offender populations and more broadly within society. We consider system barriers and practical strategies that may be implemented to identify and meet the needs of offenders with ADHD.

It has been long recognised that there is an over-representation of those with severe mental illness (SMI) interacting with the Criminal Justice System (CJS). Consequently, those who work with people with SMI are likely at some stage to find themselves interacting with and receiving requests to share information by different authorities to inform the justice process (before, during and after) as well as to facilitate multi-agency risk management structures in the community. In this chapter we briefly review the policy context and development of Liaison and Diversion systems within England and Wales for both adults and young people. Following the pathway of a mentally disordered offender being arrested by the police, we describe the medico-legal frameworks whereby mentally disordered and increased-risk offenders can be dealt with by the courts and managed in the community. We also consider the particular differences that pertain when the individual is a child or young person (CYP), and broader fora wherein information sharing occurs for the purpose of public protection in the community context, especially within MAPPA and PREVENT panels. We also note the use of the National Referral Mechanism.

Suits related to freedpeople’s marriages – the linchpin of familial legitimacy – put the disabilities of the slave past, rather than newly granted rights, at the center of discussions about freedom and abolition. In each, a domestic conflict exposed the need to consider the previous actions and intentions of freedpeople, and prompted an assessment of how the established laws and customs of domesticity could be applied to those formerly excluded from their protection. Rather than exposing the ways that race and former status determined whether freedpeople were entitled to equal rights, this chapter considers whether former status prevented some rights – including the most fundamental among them – from being enjoyed at all.

This chapter discusses the right to liberty and the principle of habeas corpus as protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, other Council of Europe instruments, in EU law and in international instruments. Attention is paid to both the grounds for legitimate detention and to procedural guarantees. In the final section, a short comparison between the different instruments is made.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the common methodologies, starting assumptions, and key aims that shape philosophical work in this sphere. This part of the chapter aims to lay bare the bones of philosophy of parenthood as this field currently stands, providing a critical tool for investigation of existing theories of parenthood, but also further demonstrating the complex interdependence between moral parenthood and the concepts of parenthood covered in the previous chapters. I then give an overview of the approaches philosophers have taken to defining the grounds of moral parenthood, and the different problem cases motivating these accounts. Whilst all these problem cases deviate from the ‘paradigm’ case – in which biological, social, legal, and moral parenthood neatly coincide – literature on parental obligations tends to focus on situations in which candidate parents are disinclined to take on some form of parenting role. Philosophers focusing on parental rights, on the other hand, have often been concerned with an overabundance of candidate parents and have aimed to provide solutions to potential disputes. These disputes might arise between parties to surrogacy agreements, biological parents and step- or adoptive parents; and, more speculatively, between biological parents and the hypothetical ‘best available parents’.

In the final chapter of the book, I argue that future research in philosophy of parenthood should take either a significantly broader or significantly narrower view of parenthood (or parental rights/obligations). We should not assume that we can use any of these four key concepts of parenthood independently, without taking into account their interrelations with others. We may therefore move forward either by considering problem cases in light of these concepts as an interrelated web (or ‘family’) or by stripping back the questions being asked to investigate more specific concepts. For example, the latter approach to moral parenthood might involve putting aside the widespread presupposition that parental rights and obligations are a concomitant ‘package’ and instead focusing on isolated issues, such as the right not to be separated from one’s biological offspring. The rights and obligations with which philosophers are chiefly concerned should, on this approach, be stripped away from the myth of ‘the parent’ as one straightforward entity with clear and consistent characteristics.

This chapter investigates the common presuppositions we make about legal parenthood – for example, the assumption that biological parents are legal parents by default in most jurisdictions. Looking back at some of the ways in which legal rules of parenthood have shifted in recent history, I show that these rules are often more tightly knit with legal structures surrounding marriage and other kinship structures, than with biological parenthood, particularly for men. I examine the problems faced by unmarried fathers who either do not know they have biological offspring or discover this too late to claim legal parental rights. I also discuss the role of the principle of ‘the best interests of the child’ and the conflicts that arise when laws motivated by the best interests of children are broken for the sake of the best interests of a specific child. I then focus on the regulation of adoption and surrogacy in order to illustrate the fragility of distinctions between these practices, in which the difference between parenthood and a criminal offence sometimes hinges on a couple of pieces of paperwork.

This chapter describes the duty of States to prevent and investigate deaths that occur while a person is in their formal custody or is otherwise being detained by the authorities. When a person is held in a place of detention, the risks of him or her being killed or seriously harmed, whether at the hands of warders or by other inmates, are acute. In addition, a detainee may decide to commit suicide, whether as a consequence of mental health issues, the broader circumstances of incarceration, or directly as a result of his or her treatment while in detention. Inadequate provision of medical care, food, or water may also contribute to a premature death. Of course, detainees can and do also die from natural causes.

In 2007, a new Swiss Criminal Code became legally effective in which short prison sentences were to a large extent replaced by income-based day-fines. In addition, flat fines (fixed sums ranging from 1 to 10,000 Swiss francs) became more widely available as additional sanctions. Both fines and day-fines are to be converted into custody if they remain unpaid. Several thousand defendants are affected by such a conversion every year, but no systematic information has been collected on these cases. In order to fill this gap, the Department of Justice of the Canton of Zurich commissioned an evaluation on how often, under what circumstances and against what type of defendants monetary penalties are converted into custody. To this end, 447 case files were analyzed and a sample of 106 defendants serving a monetary sanction in prison were interviewed. Staff members and officials in charge of collecting monetary penalties were also interviewed. The results show that the most defendants serving monetary penalties in prison are confronted with multiple problems of integration. A second group were sentenced to substantial amounts of flat fines or day-fines that they or their networks were unable to pay.

A case-study approach of two Irish cases in the mid-1850s drew popular attention to the vulnerability of women under the existing gendered law of divorce and the need for its reform. The 1856 divorce of John Talbot of Co. Roscommon and Mary Anne (néeMacCausland) of Co. Londonderry was highly publicised. The case also raised popular criticism of Talbot for conspiring to be rid of his wife, the ecclesiastical courts and parliamentary divorce. The case coincided with a lunacy panic regarding the incarceration of sane women in asylums; however, in the Talbot case, Mary Anne never regained her sanity after being detained and subjected to a physical and likely sexual attack to allow her spouse to divorce her on the grounds of adultery. This divorce attracted considerable legal attention and prompted calls for divorce to be removed from the parliamentary arena. The Westmeaths, even after decades of litigation, never secured a divorce. A re-reading of Emily, Marchioness of Westmeath, is presented here to restore her to the historical narrative as a divorce law reformer and challenge Stone’s earlier sexist portrayal of her as petty, vindictive and obsessed with women’s rights.

This chapter explores Irish bills for divorce brought to Westminster from 1701 and to the Irish parliament until the Act of Union in 1800. The moral, reputational and financial impact of divorce is considered from a gendered and class-based perspective and noteworthy cases such as that of Sir John Dillon and Lord Abercorn are examined. The profile of the first Irish divorcees in terms of gender, religion, class and grounds for divorce is determined. Moreover, themes of female agency, illegitimacy, collusion, adultery, false testimony (procured in particular from servants) as well as the association between the availability of divorce as an incentive to adultery which became a recurring theme in both clerical and lay debates are also explored in both jurisdictions. The impact of the Act of Union on the rate and profile of Irish divorces is analysed. In addition, the popular criticism and press reportage of Irish divorce allow the tropes of immorality and moral superiority to be defined and considered.

Chapter 4 delivers a comparative perspective. The United States served as a model for many other countries to adopt earnings-based family tax credits, and this chapter seeks to borrow ideas back by examining how New Zealand and Canada administer similar credits. The chapter provides an overview of New Zealand’s Working for Families Tax Credits and Canada’s Working Income Tax Benefit and Canada Child Benefit. It describes the mechanics of each, explores critiques raised by domestic scholars, and draws takeaways for the United States. While acknowledging that there are cultural differences and conceding that no design is perfect, this chapter sets the stage for a reimagination of how the United States delivers its antipoverty benefits to working families.