{
  "abstract": "Decisions regarding forced medical treatment for individuals under guardianship present profound ethical and legal challenges that touch upon the core of autonomy, human dignity and personhood. While judicial discourse often gravitates towards clinical assessments and risk–benefit calculations, the narrative and relational dimensions of a patient’s life frequently remain unarticulated within the legal framework. This article examines how pre-court clinical ethics consultations may shape the deliberative conditions under which courts reason in cases where patients with psychiatric disabilities refuse life-saving treatment.Through a comparative socio-legal analysis of two cases involving the refusal of oncological care by patients lacking decision-making capacity, the study explores how the presence of a structured ethical discussion may shape the perspectives and forms of understanding available to the court. The comparison suggests that ethics consultations may create ‘conditions of possibility’ for a more nuanced judicial inquiry. By drawing on the framework of narrative ethics, the analysis illustrates how such consultations may enable the court to recognise the patient as a ‘narrative agent’ rather than a mere subject of medical classification. Ultimately, these cases exemplify how clinical ethics consultations can contribute to creating deliberative conditions that allow treatment decisions to be situated within broader narratives of personhood, relational identity and dignity.",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "School of Public Health, Faculty of Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel"
      ],
      "name": "Maya Peled-Raz"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Pre-court clinical ethics consultations and narrative ethics: broadening judicial deliberations on treatment refusal",
  "uid": "23f7303d-eada-5db1-a75e-83f465bfb8ba"
}