Power, Authority, and Rights in the Practice of Medicine

Abstract

Power, authority, and rights are edgy, adversarial notions. They come into play primarily where there is disagreement and incipient or at least latent conflict. Exploring these somewhat contentious ideas (whose home ground of politics is an arena in which we expect contention) in the context of the practice of medicine might seem marginal if not alien. The argument of this essay is that an image of a kind of constrained disputation or conflict — an image at once suggested by and conducive to the use of “power”, “authority”, and “rights” — is in fact appropriate to much of current medical practice. As might be expected of a political theorist, this argument will be presented in part through models and analogies familiar from political thought and practice. But the matters before us are sensitive. For this and more specifically analytical reasons that will emerge as we proceed, it will be well to seek perspective by first giving attention to the venerable and apparently more comfortable notion that medicine forms a practice.