Article 3

1 June 2010 by Adam Wagner

Article 3 | Anti-torture and inhumane treatment

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Art.3 European Convention on Human Rights provides as follows:

“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

This provision corresponds with Art.4 of the EU Charter which has the same wording.

Theoretically, treatment must reach an intense level of severity for a challenge under this provision to succeed. The Strasbourg authorities originally set a high threshold for treatment falling within the scope of Art.3 ; it must exceed “a certain roughness of treatment” (The Greek Case (1969) Application Nos 00003321-3/67, 11 YbK of the ECHR 501).

In principle the rule is that conditions in the home State, however appalling, do not engage the responsibility of the deporting country. However, Art. 3 is often cited in deportation and asylum cases and allegations of institutional “torture”  and “degrading treatment” in the receiving states, advanced by intervening NGOs,  are hard to disprove.

Following the judgment in  D v United Kingdom (1997) 24 EHRR 423, that an HIV patient could not be returned to a state of origin where medical treatment was inadequate, Art. 3 has been extended to cover conditions of impoverishment and social decay in non-Convention states. In R(Adam, Limbuela and Tesema) v Home Secretary [2005] UKHL 66 the House of Lords applied this extended right to overrule legislation denying social support to asylum seekers who fail to submit their claims as soon as “reasonably practicable”. That the denial of social support was deemed to amount to torture and inhuman treatment shows how far the Convention has developed its reach as a social and economic rights instrument, where claims to social services, accommodation and a high standard of medical care can be made out under the prohibition that was drafted into the Convention in order to prevent the repeat of the sort of atrocities perpetrated in Nazi Germany. Indeed, in 2008 the Strasbourg Court stated in terms that the prohibtion on deportation extends to

the expulsion of any person afflicted with any serious, naturally occurring physical or mental illness which may cause suffering, pain and reduced life expectancy and require specialised medical treatment which may not be so readily available in the applicant’s country of origin or which may be available only at substantial cost.(N v UK, 27 May 2008)

The Strasbourg Court has recently started  to distinguish “torture” from “inhuman and degrading treatment” as separate elements of Article 3 although the results in practice are the same. In  the case of Gäfgen v. Germany (1 June 2010) the Grand Chamber considered that police officers threatening the applicant imminent pain for the purpose of extracting information  constituted “inhuman treatment” falling within the scope of Article 3. But they also held that this method of interrogation did not reach the level of cruelty to attain the threshold of torture under that provision. On the other hand, the bar for offending treatment may being set somewhat lower according to more recent case law from Strasbourg. For example, the Court found degrading treatment in breach of Article 3 when a person was deprived of his spectacles (Slyusarev v Russia 20 April 2010) even though there was no evidence of impairment to the eyes caused by the delayed replacement. The fact that the applicant could not read or write normally was sufficient to amount to treatment in breach of Art.3.   When riot police burst into schools used as shelters by G8 protestors and meted out punishment with riot sticks, this was found to have reached the level of torture under Art.3: Cesaro v Italy, 7 April 2015.  Where a prisoner with chronic health conditions and a medical note recommending the avoidance of cigarettes was confined almost all day in overcrowded cells where the other occupants smoked, the passive smoking element was relevant in the finding of conditions incompatible with Art. 3 (Florea v Romania 14 September 2010). The Court has also stated that states are under an obligation to take measures to protect prisoners from passive smoking where their state of health so requires (Elefteriadis v Romania, 25 January 2011).

Article 3 imposes an obligation on the state to ensure the health and well-being of persons deprived of their liberty, although they are not expected to provide equivalent health care in prisons as compared with the outside world (Aleksanyan v Russia, 22 December 2008).  In McGlinchey v UK the failure by the prison medical staff to properly monitor the state of the applicant, who was vomiting repeatedly under withdrawal symptoms, and suffering from dehydration, disclosed treatment in breach of Article 3 (29 April 2003). Outside the prison walls there is less case law, and the threshold is higher; for example lack of access by cancer patients to potentially life-saving experimental drugs which were not yet authorised did not amount to treatment in breach of Art.3 (Hristozov v Bulgaria, 13 November 2012).  Leaving an asylum seeker to fend for himself on the street for over a year, without provision for shelter, food or other needs, breached Art.3 in MSS v Greece and Belgium (2011).

Domestic courts may be rowing back from their earlier generous approach to Article 3 claims – see R (on the application of EW) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, [2009] EWHC 2957 and our post on the case. More recently, the Court of Appeal has confirmed that foreign nationals may be removed from the UK even where their lives will be drastically shortened due to a lack of healthcare in their home states. Removal in those circumstances does not breach Articles 3 or 8 ECHR except in the most exceptional cases (GS (India) and Ors v SSHD  [2015] EWCA Civ 40. D v UK is rarely followed in current times, as signatory states’ medical and social services become more pressed and cash strapped.

However it remains the case that Article 3 has been interpreted to cover not only state sponsored persecution but the acts of private individuals as well, since it obliges governments not to return or deport anyone to a destination country where they might be exposed to danger, whether at the hands of state agents or rebel groups.  This interpretation of Article 3 has prevented the deportation of a convicted armed robber to Somali because of the risk that he might get caught up in the civil war there – see Ahmed v Austria (1997) 24 EHRR 278.

Chahal v UK (1997) 23 EHRR 413 set a strong precedent for preventing states from deporting individuals to countries where they risk treatment in breach of Article 3. In Saadi v Italy (2008) No. 37201/06 the Court emphasised that Art.3 imposes an obligation not to extradite or expel any person who, in the receiving country, would run the real risk of being subjected to inhumane treatment. The conduct of the person concerned, however undesirable or dangerous, cannot be taken into account. The prospect that he may pose a serious threat to the community if not returned does not reduce in any way the degree of risk of ill treatment that the person may be subject to on return.  In Othman (Abu Qatada) v UK [2012] ECHR 56 the Court accepted that the UK and the Jordanian governments had made genuine efforts to provide detailed assurances that the applicant would not be ill treated on his return to Jordan; although in fact the applicant won on the basis of Article 6, as the Court found that he faced a flagrant denial of his right to a fair trial if deported.

The Strasbourg Court has also attracted criticism from high places for applying Article 3 to the way Parliament regulates the “reasonable chastisement” of children by their parents in the home (A v UK (1999) 27 EHRR 611).

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• Introduction to the Human Rights Act 1998

Article 4

1 June 2010 by Adam Wagner

Article 4 | Anti-slavery

Article 4 provides as follows:

(1) No one shall be held in slavery or servitude.

(2) No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour.

(3) For the purposes of this Article “forced or compulsory labour” shall not include:
(a) any work required to be done in the ordinary course of detention imposed according to the provisions of Art.5 of the Convention or during conditional release from such detention.
(b) any service of a military character, or in the case of conscientious objectors in countries where they are recognised, service exacted instead of compulsory military service.
(c) any service exacted in case of an emergency or calamity threatening the life or well-being of the community.
(d) any work or service which forms part of normal civic obligations.

This Article admits of no derogations or limitations in respect of slavery or servitude. Forced labour may, however, be imposed in circumstances set out in Art.4(3).

The corresponding article 5 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights provides:

(1) No one shall be held in slavery or servitude

(2) No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour

(3) Trafficking in human beings is prohibited.

This is clearly a necessary update to Article 4 ECHR, since human trafficking is a far more pressing problem in the modern world than slavery (insofar as the two can be distinguished).  It covers organised crime including the lucrative trade in illegal immigration as well as networks of sexual exploitation. This is well within the competence of the EU since the implementation of Directive 2011/36 on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims. On the other hand, Article 51 limits Article 5, like the other rights in the EU Charter, to actions against EU institutions and Member States when they are implementing EU law.

Recently the Strasbourg Court has ruled that trafficking in human beings, although not epxlicitly mentioned in the ECHR, falls within the scope of Article 4: Rantsev v. Cyprus and Russia (2010). In this case, the Court laid down the obligations of governments under Article 4 in the modern climate of trade in humans:

… in addition to criminal law measures to punish traffickers, Article 4 requires member States to put in place adequate measures regulating businesses often used as a cover for human trafficking. Furthermore, a State’s immigration rules must address relevant concerns relating to encouragement, facilitation or tolerance of trafficking.

The Court has stated that it considered it “appropriate” to examine

the extent to which trafficking itself may be considered to run counter to the spirit and purpose of Article 4 of the Convention such as to fall within the scope of the guarantees offered by that Article without the need to access which of the three types of proscribed conduct are engaged by the particular treatment in question. [286]

According to Karen Reid, author of A Practitioner’s Guide to the European Convention on Human Rights (Sweet & Maxwell 5th edition, 2015) an obligation to investigate situations of potential trafficking has also been read into Art.4. In Rantsev v Cyprus and Russia (7 January 2010), the Russian government was in breach of its procedural obligation in that it had failed to investigate the recruitment in Russia of a young woman who had gone to work as a cabaret artiste in Cyprus, and the Cypriot authorities had failed properly and thoroughly to investigate how her death had occurred.

Until recently however the most active part of the ECHR provision is Art.4(2). There are two elements in the definition of forced labour derived from International Labour Organisation Convention No. 29 (1930) (incorporated into Convention jurisprudence in X v Federal Republic of Germany (1974) 17 YbK 148):

(1) the work must be performed involuntarily;
(2) the requirement to do the work must be unjust or oppressive or the work itself involve avoidable hardship.

In Silidian v France  the European Court of Human Rights upheld an application by a Togolese girl who had been held as an unpaid domestic worker in Paris for four years where she had been deprived of her passport and required to work for fifteen hours a day. Her argument was that France had failed in its positive obligation to have adequate criminal offences in place to prevent such servitude, and the Court agreed that her rights under Article 4(2) had been violated, although they rejected her argument under Article 4(1):

Although the applicant was, in the instant case, clearly deprived of her personal autonomy, the evidence does not suggest that she was held in slavery in the proper sense, in other words that Mr and Mrs B. exercised a genuine right of legal ownership over her, thus reducing her to the status of an “object”. [122]

(App No. 73316/01) An early authority on forced labour was Iverson v Norway (1963) 6 YbK 278. The applicant was convicted after abandoning his post in the public dental service in a northern district which he had been required to take up under Norwegian legislation for a year. The European Commission of Human Rights held that the public dental service ordinance had not imposed forced labour for the purposes of Art.4 since it did not fulfil the conditions set out by the ILO (above). The work was “for a short period, provided favourable remuneration and did not involve any discriminatory, arbitrary or punitive application”.

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• Introduction to the Human Rights Act 1998

How most Australians do human rights without a Human Rights Act

9 July 2012 by David Hart KC

A sparkling, erudite and funny lecture last Thursday 5 July from the Chief Justice of Australia, exploring how the Australian system with a constitution, but without a Bill of Rights/Human Rights Act, seeks to deliver human rights protection – thanks to the Administrative Law Bar Association and the Angl0-Australasian Law Society. I shall try to summarise the differences, though, rather like the pre-HRA UK position, Australian human rights protection is a subtle one and a difficult one to explain in a short post. Particularly for a Pom. So I am in part throwing down a challenge to our Australian readers (up until this point, at least, quite a few) to comment on what follows.

The constitutional framework  is all important. There are three major differences between this and the UK “constitution”. The first is the presence of a written constitution over 100 years old, and amendable only by referendum. The second is a federal system laid down by that constitution. Out of that arrangement comes a separation of powers between judiciary, legislature, and executive, and also between the Commonwealth (i.e, the federation) and each State, taken against the background of general common law principles drawn from the States’ shared colonial history. And the third is the lack of any substantive human rights instrument applicable to Australia as a whole.

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Supreme Court rules there is no right to privacy against “paedophile hunters” – an extended look

21 July 2020 by Sapan Maini-Thompson

In Sutherland v Her Majesty’s Advocate, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that it was compatible with the accused person’s rights under ECHR article 8 to use evidence obtained by “paedophile hunter” (“PH”) groups in a criminal trial.  

PH groups impersonate children online to lure persons into making inappropriate or sexualised communications with them over the internet, and then provide the material generated by such contact to the police. Importantly, they operate without police authorisation. 

Per Section 6(1) of the HRA, a prosecution authority – as a public authority – cannot lawfully act in a way that is incompatible with a Convention right. Consequently, there were two compatibility issues on appeal before the Supreme Court:

1. Were the appellant’s article 8 rights interfered with by the use of the communications provided by the PH group as evidence in his public prosecution?
2. To what extent is the state’s obligation to provide adequate protection for article 8 rights incompatible with the use by a public prosecutor of material supplied by PH groups in investigating and prosecuting crime?

More from Strasbourg on possession and Article 8 – Nearly Legal

24 September 2012 by Guest Contributor

BUCKLAND v. THE UNITED KINGDOM – 40060/08 – HEJUD [2012] ECHR 1710 – read judgment

The ECtHR’s recent decision in Buckland v UK demonstrates again how wonderfully delphic the subject of housing and Article 8 rights to private and family life has become.

In one sense, the outcome was fairly predictable because the case was determined by the UK Courts before the Supreme Court in Manchester CC v Pinnock established the principles of proportionality in possession claims.

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Supreme Court: Failure to disclose evidence did not breach Art 6

18 December 2015 by Thomas Raine

Macklin v Her Majesty’s Advocate [2015] UKSC 77, 16^th December 2015 – read judgment

The Supreme Court has unanimously dismissed an appeal against a decision of Scotland’s High Court of Justiciary (available here) in which it refused to overturn a criminal conviction on the basis that the non-disclosure of evidence breached the appellant’s right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

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Joint Committee on Human Rights calls for control order scheme to be discontinued

31 March 2010 by Angus McCullough KC

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (‘the Joint Committee’) has released its report on the Annual Renewal of Control Order Legislation 2010, in which it heavily criticised the control order scheme. The scheme, introduced in 2005, allows courts to put terror suspects under restrictions resembling house arrest by placing them under curfews of up to 16 hours a day and, typically, constraints on their movements and communications. There were 12 suspects subject to control orders in December 2009.

Whereas the Joint Committee has previously criticised the scheme, this is the first time that it has recommended for it to be discontinued. The committee said:

We have serious concerns about the control order system. Evidence shows the devastating impact of control orders on the subject of the orders, their families and their communities. In addition detailed information is now available about the cost of control orders which raises questions about whether the cost the system is out of all proportion to the supposed public benefit. We find it hard to believe that the annual cost of surveillance of the small number of individuals subject to control orders would exceed the amount currently being paid to lawyers in the ongoing litigation about control orders. Finally, we believe that because the Government has ignored our previous recommendations for reform, the system gives rise to unnecessary breaches of individuals’ rights to liberty and due process.

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Have we lost sight of J.S. Mill’s concept of the right to liberty? Article 5 in the Court of Protection

21 November 2014 by Rosalind English

Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council v KW (by her litigation friend Celia Walsh)   [2014] EWCOP 45 – read judgment

Mostyn J has pulled no punches in rejecting an application for a declaration that an incapacitated person, being looked after in her own home, has been deprived of her liberty contrary to Article 5. There is a very full account of the judgment on the Mental Capacity Law and Policy blog so I will keep this summary short.

The first respondent, KW, is a 52 year old woman who is severely mentally incapacitated. She suffered brain damage while undergoing surgery to correct arteriovenous malformation in 1996. This resulted in a subarachnoid haemorrhage and long term brain damage. She was left with cognitive and mental health problems, epilepsy and physical disability. She was discharged from hospital into a rehabilitation unit and thence to her own home, a bungalow in Middleton, with 24/7 support. Physically, KW is just about ambulant with the use of a wheeled Zimmer frame. Mentally, she is trapped in the past. She believes it is 1996 and that she is living at her old home with her three small children (who are now all adult). As Mostyn J says,

Her delusions are very powerful and she has a tendency to try to wander off in order to find her small children. Her present home is held under a tenancy from a Housing Association. The arrangement entails the presence of carers 24/7 [who] attend to her every need in an effort to make her life as normal as possible. If she tries to wander off she will be brought back.

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Supreme Court upholds sanctions on Eugene Shvidler and Dalston Projects in test case for UK regime

18 August 2025 by Guest Contributor

Shvidler v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and Dalston Projects Ltd and others v Secretary of State for Transport [2025] UKSC 30

By Talia Zybutz

Introduction

These appeals – Shvidler v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and Dalston Projects Ltd v Secretary of State for Transport – were a test case for the operation of the UK’s sanctions regime introduced in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Supreme Court confirmed that while the court’s task is to assess proportionality for itself, a wide margin of appreciation will be afforded to the executive in judging how best to respond to and restrain Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

The Round Up: End of the Charlie Gard case, Russian Homosexuality Laws, and the Northern Ireland Abortion Case

27 June 2017 by Sarah Ewart

IN THE NEWS

The Strasbourg Court has ruled inadmissible the claims by Charlie Gard’s parents that the withdrawal of artificial ventilation from the severely ill child would breach their right to respect for family life under Article 8. Seven judges ruled that it was most likely that Charlie was “being exposed to continued pain, suffering and distress”. The parents had wanted to take him to undergo experimental treatment in the US, but the Strasbourg Court said that undergoing this treatment with “no prospects of success… would offer no benefit”.

These means that the Great Ormand Street Hospital may proceed with  the Supreme Court’s order to end the baby’s continued suffering by removing Charlie from life support.  We will post a link to the text of the decision when it becomes available; here in the meantime is the press release detailing the inadmissibility decision in the case Gard and Others v. the UK . See our most recent update here for more details and earlier posts here and here.

As the Law Gazette reports, David Lidington takes over from Liz Truss as Lord Chancellor and representative of the judiciary in the Cabinet. He is our fifth Lord Chancellor in just five years.  David Lidington has been Conservative MP for Aylesbury since 1992.  You can find his voting record here and check out this profile of his record on human rights by Rights Info.

The Independent reports that the number far right extremists reported to the government’s counter-terrorism Prevent strategists increased by 30% in the past year. Prevent has been criticised for its ineffectiveness and now for focusing too heavily on Islamist terror.  See  Liora Lazarus in the UK Constitutional Law blog on the tension between (and politicisation of) human rights and effective counter-terrorism, and Adam Wagner on how we respond to terror.

Litigation following the Grenfell Tower disaster is inevitable. Sir Keir Starmer, the former Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), said on the Andrew Marr show that prosecutors are looking into corporate manslaughter charges. Such a charge is notoriously difficult to bring (see Solicitors’ Journal here and the CPS guidelines here). There have been other calls for charges to be brought under the common law offence of gross negligence manslaughter, especially after it was revealed that both the insulation and the tiles in the building failed multiple safety tests. But legal challenges regarding negligent maintenance are also difficult to bring due to the lack of legal aid for the claimants. We’ll keep you posted as this case develops.

It’s Refugee Week this week, so head over to Free Movement for an in-depth look at the new Home Office policy of periodically reviewing (and where possible returning) refugees who have been granted indefinite leave to remain.
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Another cuts challenge fails: Changes to housing benefit scheme is lawful

14 October 2011 by Richard Mumford

Child Poverty Action Group v Secretary of State for Work & Pensions [2011] EWHC 2616 (Admin) – Read judgment

On 13 October 2011 Mr Justice Supperstone in the High Court held that changes to rules for calculating housing benefit were lawful and in particular did not breach equality legislation.

Two particular measures were under challenge. The first was the introduction of maximum weekly caps on the amount of local housing allowance (LHA). The second was the reduction of the maximum size in accommodation eligible for housing benefit from five bedrooms to four bedrooms.

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Are Facebook and Twitter making criminals of us all? – Free panel debate, Wed 17 Oct

10 October 2012 by Adam Wagner

Update – only 29 places left (2:10pm)

For anyone interested in the issues I raised in my post yesterday about a man given twelve weeks in prison for making sick jokes on Facebook, I am chairing a Question Time-style panel debate next Wednesday 17 October 2012, 6-7:30pm, organised by the Human Rights Lawyers Association and Article 19, the free speech charity. Article 19 are hosting the event at their offices in Farringdon.

The panel is excellent, including Tamsin Allen (head of Media and Information Law at Bindmans solicitors), John Cooper QC (amongst many other things, counsel for Paul Chambers in the Twitter joke trial) and Gabrielle Guillemin (legal officer at Article 19). The event is free and open to all, but space is limited so if you would like to come, please email administrator@hrla.org.uk.

Full details below or in a prettier version, here:

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Might the Human Rights Act impose a duty to pass subordinate legislation?

11 December 2020 by Rosalind English

On 25 November 2020 David Hart wrote a post setting out the central issues in Henshaw J’s lengthy judgment, R (o.t.a. of Aviva & Swiss Re) v. Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2020] EWHC 3118 (Admin). If you want to remind yourself of the details of this interesting case read David’s post –Successful insurers’ A1P1 claim concerning benefits reimbursement in asbestos claims.

One question David didn’t go into occupies only two pages of the 183 paragraphs but is worth a post on its own. The claimant insurers argued that the defendant Secretary of State had unlawfully omitted to make regulations under the Social Security (Recovery of Benefits) Act 1997 that would have limited the amount of the liability imposed on the insurer by that Act (Section 22(4)). This is because of subsequent developments in the law of tort which made unlimited liability unfair. They maintained that as Parliament had itself been prepared to delegate authority in this area to the Executive, the failure of the defendant to make secondary legislation led directly to their loss. Section 30(1) of the 1997 Act provides that any power under it to make regulations or an order is exercisable by statutory instrument.

Indefinite Detention and the Rule of Law — Catherine Jaquiss

12 December 2017 by Guest Contributor

On 1 December 2017 an event in Temple Church with the Bar Council in collaboration with Refugee Tales, an outreach project whose aim is to see the end of indefinite immigration detention, saw an announcement of new recommendations for reform of the system of immigration detention.

This followed from the publication on 30 November 2017 of ‘Injustice in Immigration Detention, Perspectives from Legal Professionals’, an independent report by Dr Anna Lindley of SOAS. Read the report here: http://www.barcouncil.org.uk/media/623583/171130_injustice_in_immigration_detention_dr_anna_lindley.pdf

The Bar Council, led by Andrew Langdon QC, is making a series of recommendations in light of the report, as follows:

1. A 28-day time limit for administrative detention;

2. Automatic judicial oversight of the arrangements for holding people in administrative detention;

3. Adequate legal aid for advice and representation for those held in immigration detention to challenge the loss of their liberty;

4. A ban on the use of prisons for the purposes of administrative detention;

5. Special care for vulnerable people and victims of torture held in administrative detention; and

6. Review and clarification of the criteria for administrative detention. The relevant policy and rules need to be accessible and intelligible so that all those who are affected by the exercise of powers to detain understand the reasons for the exercise of those powers and can challenge decisions where appropriate.

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Sanctity of life v personal autonomy: Court of Protection

3 January 2017 by Rosalind English

Briggs v Briggs & Ors [2016] EWCOP 53 (20 December 2016) – read judgment

Apologies for starting the new year on such a sombre note, but there is a shaft of light in that this Court of Protection judgement is a clear indication that judges – or some of them – are prepared to favour an individual’s autonomy over the traditional emphasis on the sanctity of life above all else.

As Charles J points out, this case raises issues of life and death and so vitally important principles and strongly held views. The decision he had to make was whether a part of the current treatment of Mr Paul Briggs, namely clinically assisted nutrition and hydration (CANH), should be continued. Mr Briggs was in a minimally conscious state (MCS) as the result of serious and permanent brain damage he suffered as the victim of a traffic accident eighteen months ago. He was not in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) and so the approach taken by the House of Lords in the Tony Bland case did not apply to him (Airedale NHS Trust v Bland [1993] AC 789). In that case, it will be remembered, their Lordships concluded that the continuation of life in such a state was futile. Problems arose with subsequent advancements in neurological diagnosis, where a less catastrophic condition known as MCS was established. In 2012 a court ruled that a patient in MCS could not be deemed to have made an advance directive regarding medical treatment even though during her lifetime she had made her position very clear that she would not want to continue living in such a reduced state (Re M (Adult Patient) (Minimally Conscious State: Withdrawal of Treatment) [2012] 1 WLR 1653). Her views did not, in their view, encapsulate the state of MCS. See my post on that decision here. Baker J’s refusal of the family’s application to allow treatment to be withdrawn came in for severe criticism in the British Medical Journal (see Richard Mumford’s post on that article). The author took Baker J to task for not according significant weight to the informally expressed views of M on life-sustaining treatment, expressed before she came ill. Charles J took a very different approach in this case.
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