A debate piece in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter by the philosophers Nicholas Espinoza and Martin Peterson (autotranslated version) on abortion rights has led to strong reactions in the Swedish blogosphere. The authors make two claims…

This week France’s ban on people covering their faces in public comes into force, prohibiting people from wearing, among other things, burqas, niqabs and masks. This has been greeted with horror by many in the UK. But is France showing more…

Legal Realism has been caricaturised as a school that believes that judicial decisions are made according to what the judge has had for breakfast. Research conducted in Israel suggests that this may not be so far from the truth.

Most people believe that a meritocracy is the ideal system for distributing jobs and university places. But ‘merit’ is notoriously difficult to define, as a recent story involving Liverpool football club illustrates. Liverpool is not the al…

Gordon Brown has just said that he made a big mistake about financial regulation. His remarks are in line with many politicians on the financial crisis: regulation failed therefore we need more regulation. But do we? Frideswide Square is a …

“The only place where you could see life and death, i. e., violent death now that the wars were over, was in the bull ring and I wanted very much to go to Spain where I could study it” wrote Ernest Hemingway. These days he could…

In a recently released report the UK Human Genetics Commission said there are “no specific social, ethical or legal principles” against preconception screening. If a couple may benefit from it, testing should be available so the…

The German Medical Association has recommended that doctors should sometimes make use of deceptive placebo treatments when those treatments may be more effective than pharmacologically active alternatives. This recommendation stands at odds…

By Charles Foster I have just finished writing a book about dignity in bioethics. Much of it was a defence against the allegation that dignity is hopelessly amorphous; feel-good philosophical window-dressing; the name we give to whatever pr…

After the tsunami of 11 March, many thousands of people in northern Japan have lost their homes or are in dire need of medical and other supplies. The Oxfam website has a special page on the disaster through which you can donate using a deb…