The Ethics, Society, and Law Student’s Association are pleased to present our Fall Academic Seminar; End-of-Life Care: Ethics and the Law, with guest lecturer Wayne Sumner.

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Two issues concerning end-of-life care are now very much on the front burner in Canada. One of them concerns the legal status of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, both of which are currently prohibited by provisions in the Criminal Code. Those provisions are now being subjected to a constitutional challenge in the Carter case, which is likely to be heard by the Supreme Court sometime next year. Meanwhile, the province of Quebec is in the process of passing its own legislation which would legalize euthanasia in that province.

The other issue concerns the continuation of life-sustaining treatment which physicians deem ‘futile’ or of ‘no medical benefit’. The question of who gets to decide when and whether treatment will be discontinued was addressed recently by the Supreme Court in the Rasouli case. This talk will explore both the legal and the ethical dimensions of these issues.

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Wayne Sumner received his B.A. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He is the author of five books:

Abortion and Moral Theory (cited in the 1988 Morgentaler decision by the Supreme Court of Canada);
The Moral Foundation of Rights; Welfare, Ethics, and Happiness;
The Hateful and the Obscene: Studies in the Limits of Free Expression (shortlisted for the Donner Prize for books on Canadian public policy and winner of the C.B. Macpherson Prize for books on political theory); Assisted Death: A Study in Ethics and Law.

Dr. Sumner is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a recipient of the University of Toronto’s Northrop Frye Award. With teaching and research interests in ethical theory, bioethics, political philosophy and philosophy of law, Dr. Sumner is currently University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.

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Refreshments will be provided.

If you are attending, please RSVP by sending us an email at:
utethicssocietyandlaw@gmail.com