Biolaw Stakes, Activist Jurisprudence, and (Presumed) Limits for Protected Interests

Abstract

This essay shows that the emerging phenomenon called biolaw would benefit from philosophically critical exercises to secure a good fit with international criminal law (ICL). Although legal experts agree to treat ICL as the primary framework for conceptualisation and dynamic realisation (through norm-conferment, – implementation and -enforcement), the implied (bio)law-and-(bio)ethics integration can still be construed in different ways, thereby paving more than one path for biolaw. With the emphasis on transplant-related crimes, the authors try to capture a notion of important biolaw stakes, which provides direction-posts for the inescapable marketplace discussion. The argument draws on a broad stakeholder jurisprudence that does not overplay the distinction between capitalism and altruism – to avoid the abandonment of vulnerable cum poor stakeholders. Critically, theories may look like instances of activist jurisprudence, lines of argument and reasoning that would (better) explain, (re)direct and (ethically) enhance the realm, but which nevertheless fail substantively or procedurally, or both.