Professor Charles Foster

Fellow of Exeter College; Visiting Professor, Faculty of Law

About

Professor Charles Foster is a member of the Oxford Law Faculty (Visiting Professor), a Senior Research Associate at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics (part of the Faculty of Philosophy), a Research Associate at the Ethox Centre (a multidisciplinary bioethics research centre within the Nuffield Department of Public Health, University of Oxford), a Research Associate at the Health, Law and Emerging Technologies Centre (part of the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford), and an Associate at the Oxford Human Rights Hub. Professor Foster is also a barrister, practising at 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square (specializing in medical law) and a part time judge of the Crown Court (where he is authorized to try serious sexual offences) and the County Court.

Professor Foster joined Exeter College as a Senior Supernumerary Fellow in 2022.

His PhD is from the University of Cambridge for work on the way that the law handles human autonomy and dignity in medical decision-making.

Professor Foster's research is a search for a satisfactory legal anthropology. He is concerned that we make decisions crucially affecting human welfare without having any real idea what sort of creatures we are. In the search for answers that will do real legal work he takes cross-bearings from many perspectives and disciplines, including biology (he is particularly concerned with the moral status of non-human animals and what that status can tell us about our own status), moral philosophy, epistemology, neuroethics, and theology. Professor Foster has concentrated his search in the field of medical law and ethics, and has written extensively about issues such as identity and personhood, the importance and limitation of the principle of autonomy, the meaning and use of the notion of human dignity, and the use of intuitions in moral and legal reasoning.

Cases in medical law

At the Bar, Professor Foster has been involved in some of the key cases in medical law, including the challenge in the European Court of Human Rights to the Belgian law of euthanasia (Mortier v Belgium), the Supreme Court’s review of the requirement for court endorsement of the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from patients in prolonged disorders of consciousness (An NHS Trust v Y, 2018), the assisted suicide litigation in the Supreme Court (Nicklinson v Ministry of Justice, 2014), and the House of Lords (Purdy v DPP, 2009); the first prosecution of a doctor under the Female Genital Mutilation Act (R v Dharmasena 2015); Kadir v Mistry (2014) (principles governing the recoverability of damages for pain, suffering and loss of amenity in cases of delayed diagnosis); CP v The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (2014) (can a child in utero be the victim of a crime for the purposes of the CICA jurisdiction?); NHS Trust A v MB (a child) and Mr and Mrs B. (2006) (attempt by NHS Trust to withdraw life-sustaining artificial ventilation from a child with Spinal Muscular Atrophy); Al Hamwi v Johnston and North West London Hospitals NHS Trust (2005) (extent of clinician’s obligation to ensure that patient had understood warning about risks of amniocentesis); Halsey v Milton Keynes NHS Trust: Steel v Joy (2004) (effect on costs of a refusal to mediate); Kataria v Essex Strategic Health Authority (2004) (meaning of ‘review’); R v Chief Constable of West Mercia ex p Jepson (2003): Judicial review of police decision not to prosecute for late abortion of a child with cleft lip/palate; Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust v As, Bs and others (2003) (who is the father where the wrong embryo is implanted into a woman as a result of an IVF mix-up? The biological father or the husband of the woman?).

Publications

Professor Foster does a good deal of writing that would be classified as non-academic (although doesn't acknowledge any significant distinction between academic and non-academic writing). A recent example is Being a Beast, which is a New York Times Bestseller, was long-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize (the ‘non-fiction Booker’) and the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, won the Deux Millions d’Amis literary prize (France), and the IgNobel prize for Biology in 2016.

That book, like most of his other non-academic writing, explores themes directly pertinent to his academic research (such as: Are humans special? How plastic is our identity? Can we know enough about the world to be able to make informed decisions?).

A sequel, Being a Human: Adventures in 40,000 years of consciousness (2021) examines three seismic epochs in the history of consciousness: the Upper Palaeolithic, the Neolithic and the Enlightenment.

The Screaming Sky (Little Toller, 2021) was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize.

Recent and forthcoming books include a novel which seeks to recruit the voices of non-humans in telling a human story (Little Brown Sea, 2022), a book of short stories (Cry of the Wild: Eight animals under siege, forthcoming: Doubleday/Penguin), which illustrates the challenges faced by various non-human species of living alongside us, an examination of contemporary apostasy (Faiths Lost and Found (with Martyn Percy): forthcoming: Darton Longman and Todd), and a study of the science and law of human/wildlife conflict (When animals and humans clash (with John Cooper): forthcoming: Taylor & Francis).

Professor Foster contributes to many publications, including the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Times, and the Literary Review.

A complete list of Professor Foster's publications can be found here.

Professor Charles Foster can also be contacted at [email protected]

Expertise

  • Medical law
  • Medical ethics and bioethics
  • Consciousness in non-human animals and the moral status of non-human animals
  • Identity and personhood
  • Human dignity
  • Abortion and the moral status of the embryo/fetus
  • Euthanasia and assisted suicide
  • Medical research: law and ethics

Media experience

Professor Charles Foster has extensive media experience including many appearances on national and international broadcast and in print media.

Languages

English