About me

Welcome! I'm Isra Black.

I'm a Lecturer in Law at UCL Faculty of Laws. My research covers and combines health law and philosophy, with a particular substantive interest in end of life issues and health care law theory.

I received my PhD in Law and Ethics from the Centre of Medical Law of Ethics, Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London in 2016. My doctoral research on assisted death was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Between 2016 and 2021, I was a lecturer in law at York Law School, University of York. In 2016, I was a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University, and a Research Associate at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute. In 2015, I was a research associate in health law and human rights on the ALS-CarE project, based at the Klinikum Rechts der Isar, Technische Universität München. I was also a researcher at the Fondation Brocher in the summers of 2013 and 2015.

If you'd like to get in touch, please contact me at isra.black [at] ucl.ac.uk.

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With Lisa Forsberg and Anthony Skelton at the Fondation Brocher in July 2015.

Recent publications

Anthony Skelton, Lisa Forsberg, and Isra Black, 'Overriding adolescent refusals of treatment' (2021) Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (forthcoming)

Isra Black, 'Novel beings and assisted nonexistence' (2021) (30(3) Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 543 (free link)

Isra Black, 'A pro tanto moral case for assisted death' in Sue Westwood (ed), Death Rights: Regulating the End of Life (Routledge 2021)

Isra Black, 'Patients, physicians, and law at the end of life in England and Wales' in Ruth Board, Michael I Bennett, Penney Lewis, John Wagstaff, and Peter Selby (eds), Choices in End of Life Care for Cancer Patients (EBN Health 2020) (accepted manuscript)

Isra Black, ‘Refusing Life Prolonging Medical Treatment and the ECHR’ (2018) 38(2) OJLS 299 (free link).

Isra Black and Ásgeir Helgason, ‘Using motivational interviewing to facilitate death talk in end-of-life care: an ethical analysis’ (2018) 17 BMC Palliative Care 51 (open access).

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Current projects

Project with Lisa Forsberg and Anthony Skelton: Adolescent medical treatment.
Workstreams include the article in JESP above, an article 'Transformative experience and decision-making capacity' (currently R&R), an edited book Consenting Children (Proceedings of the British Academy) (Jonathan Herring ed too), and two chapters in our book, 'Asymmetry of capacity to consent or to refuse treatment and rational choice' and ‘The sharing of normative powers: a (reluctant) welfarist defence’.

Project with Lisa Forsberg and Tom Douglas: Human rights law and compulsory/mandatory vaccination for pandemic diseases.

Chapter with Lisa Forsberg: 'The realm of health law' in Atina Krajewska and Jean McHale (eds) Reimagining Health Law (Edward Elgar)

Chapter with Lisa Forsberg and Mariel Piechowicz:  'Ethical issues in the practice of motivational interviewing' in Antoine Douaihy, Thomas M Kelly, and Melanie A Gold (eds), ​Motivational Interviewing: A Guide for Medical Trainees (OUP)

Article: 'Physician assisted death through the medical exception'.

Article with Ralf Jox: 'Two kinds of uncertainty about stopping of eating and drinking'