Physical Self-determination: Patients, Children, Care Recipients

Project period: 2024-2025

Physical self-determination is understood as a human right. Nevertheless, physical self-determination has never been an equal right enjoyed by all people; rather, it is a right with gradations. To this day, the right of physical self-determination is different for children and recipients of care than it is for ‘normal’ adults.

Three private law studies explore how theories, views and understandings of physical self-determination have developed for patients, children, incapacitated individuals, and persons receiving care since the beginning of the 20th century. These inquiries consider commonalities and patterns with regard to actors, causes, and arguments. The research sheds light on the origins of physicians’ decision-making prerogatives, why a parental entitlement to administer corporal punishment long seemed valid, why the medical decision of an adolescent requires parental consent, and how the legality of coercive treatment is assessed. At the same time, the inquiry makes apparent that every legal conception of physical self-determination leads to dilemma.

Literature
 

Anne Röthel, Zwangsbehandlung im Dogmenwandel, FamRZ 9/2025, 645-649.

Anne Röthel, Körperliche Selbstbestimmung. Dogmen, Diskurse, Deutungen, Klostermann, Frankfurt 2024, 332 pp.