Organ Donation and Property Law (PDF)

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Law - Civil / Private / Law of Obligation / Property Law, grade: 8,5, Maastricht University, course: Legal Writing , language: English, abstract: According to John Locke "Every man has a property in his own person". Whether this theory can be regarded as being correct is going to be answered in this paper, as it deals with organ donation and its relation to the field of property law, especially that of new objects of property law. Due to the fact that there is an increasing development of biomedical research and technology, the human body is treated differently. Beside the many ethnical concerns, organ donation can be illuminated from a legal point of view, namely at what point in time property law plays a role and how far it can influence organ donation itself.
There is a growing need to determine whether and under which circumstances we own our organs and how we can legally transfer them to another proprietor. It cannot be denied that property law is an important topic with regard to organ donation, because beside other new objects in the field of property law, such as emission rights or virtual property, it does not only seem to be interesting but also necessary to determine whether we own our human body and its organs and how they can be transferred to another person in a legal way. Even though human organs differ from the usual objects of property law, one can principally establish the same questions as with regard to other objects of that topic, for example how ownership can be transferred. But one should keep in mind that because the human body is involved it is a highly sensitive and ethical issue.
Due to the fact that the main focus lies on property law and especially on the concept of ownership the ethical issues will not be addressed extensively, because this would be beyond the scope of this paper. Corollary, there is a central research question, namely: Can the transfer of ownership of organs within different European Union countries take place, and under which circumstances can it take place? I use a deductive reasoning method, meaning that I start with the more general issue and principles of ownership itself, in order to be able to answer the more specific research question in the end.
It seems to be interesting to find out, how the basic concept of ownership can be applied to such a specific topic as the human body and its organs....