Disability, Medical Intervention, and Individual Freedom

Abstract

In a recent authoritative work on the welfare state it is claimed that the emphasis on citizens’ rights and the almost total omission of citizens’ duties are conspicuous features of the contemporary social climate [1]. To redress the balance “the rights of citizens to the benefits of the welfare state must be accompanied by reciprocal duties” [1]. This statement may be correct in a very general way, but for the student of welfare law it is not difficult to find numerous exceptions to it. Even where the law of social welfare did not grow up on “the theory that welfare is a gratuity furnished by the state, and thus may be made subject to whatever conditions the state sees fit to impose” [2], it contains many obligations for citizens as conditions of their entitlement to benefits, and the fact that interpretations of these obligations by administrators often go unchallenged allows for wide administrative discretion in their enforcement. As a reacting to this, and in the wake of the general revival of interest in fundamental rights, the substantive and procedural rights of individual beneficiaries are recognized to a growing extent as creating important legal issues, deserving more attention than has been paid to them before [2].