Conclusion: medical law re-written?

In this collection we have imagined how key cases in medical law could have been decided. Reflecting on the development of the ethical judgments project in general, and more directly on the resulting contents of this book, various themes have emerged. The alternative judgments and the comments on them have proven a fascinating exercise for providing counterfactual medico-legal developments; alternative histories that the law might have created. They have also, naturally, highlighted more explicitly than the original judgments how ethical concerns might have impacted upon judicial reasoning. But in practical and academic terms, the lessons from the project run much deeper than the production of mere counterfactuals. In this Conclusion we consider some of what we have learned in our exercises in judicial reasoning.