About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


42 Oxford J. Legal Stud. 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/oxfjls42 and id is 1 raw text is: Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 42, No. 1 (2022) pp. 1-26 doi:10.1093/ojls/gqab010 Advance Access Publication 18 June 2021 Professional Responsibility: Conceptual Rescue and Plea for Reform Sylvie Delacroix * Abstract For as long as knowledge asymmetry continues to be deemed the defin- ing characteristic of the lay-professional relationship, the courts' delineation of obli- gations meant to address lay vulnerability will too frequently end up compounding the layperson's non-epistemic, 'sense of self' vulnerability. The proposed re-concep- tualisation of professional responsibility calls for reform on several fronts: among these, an expanded 'duty to consult' (beyond do-not-resuscitate-orders) is uniquely placed as a justiciable criterion capable of addressing such a situational, 'sense of self' vulnerability. Keywords: professional responsibility, vulnerability, duty to consult, Montgomery, risk disclosure, sense of self. 1. Introduction As a sociological concept, the professions' remit is necessarily uncertain: it is constantly renegotiated as more and more occupations strive to be recognised as a 'profession'. As a legal and ethical concept, 'professional responsibility' is often understood in a similarly loose fashion. Most are content to associate professional responsibility with some rather vague 'public service' dimension that could possibly warrant extra duties. The cost of this conceptually haphaz- ard delineation of professional responsibility is insidious. While some domains-such as education-are stuck with inadequate responsibility practi- ces, novel occupations that ought to be held to different responsibility stand- ards are treated in the same way as generic service providers. The roots of this haphazard delineation can be traced to several factors: his- torically, the concept of professional responsibility has never really recovered from its entanglement with some ill-advised 'professionalism' rhetoric. According to the latter, the professions' special status (both in terms of re- sponsibility and privileges) would take its roots in the presumed epistemic and *Birmingham Law School. Email: s.delacroix@bham.ac.uk. I am grateful to Jonathan Montgomery, Maria Lee, Jean McHale, Atina Krajewska and Andrea Sangiovanni for their insightful comments and advice on earlier versions of this article. © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.