Women Leaders in Law Fellow Iris Reuvecamp
This Fellowship is supporting Iris to produce a comprehensive text on Death, Dying and the law in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Borrin Foundation Women Leaders in Law Fellowship
Iris’s plan
Advances in healthcare have changed the experience of dying. Death may now follow prolonged illness and involve difficult decisions about treatment, care and quality of life. Greater openness about death, how we prepare for it, what matters to us at the end of life, and how we support people and whānau can help people express their wishes, make informed choices, and have their rights, values and preferences respected. This project seeks to contribute to that openness by bringing together the legal knowledge needed to navigate the choices, rights and responsibilities that arise before, during and after death.
The text will examine how law intersects with death and dying, bringing together societal, cultural, human rights and lived experience perspectives with legal issues arising in end-of-life healthcare and after death. It will address advance directives, palliative care, life-prolonging treatment, assisted dying, organ and tissue donation, coronial processes, burial and cremation, privacy, taxation, estate administration and succession. It aims to support people to understand and exercise their rights, participate meaningfully in decisions about their care and affairs, and give practical effect to fundamental human rights, including autonomy, dignity, privacy and equality.
The primary practical aim is to support professional practice by providing clinicians and lawyers with a resource to navigate legal issues around death and dying, while making information about preparing for death and its aftermath more accessible to the public. Ultimately, the project seeks to develop a coherent, rigorous and accessible account of death, dying and the law in Aotearoa New Zealand with practical and enduring value.
About Iris
Iris is a barrister and solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand and a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales. Iris has been practising as a health and disability law specialist for twenty years both as inhouse counsel and as an external advisor. Iris appears regularly in a range of courts and tribunals and is a court appointed lawyer for the subject person under the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988 and lawyer for the child.
She is an Affiliate of the Law Faculty and a Professional Practice Fellow of the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago and teaches on health and disability law. Iris has published on a range of topics relevant to health and disability law. Iris was co-editor of Mental Capacity Law in New Zealand (Thomson Reuters, Wellington, 2019). Iris holds a number of health and disability sector governance roles. She is also chair of the Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology and a member of the Clinical Advisory Ethics Group for Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley District, Te Whatu Ora.
Grant Amount
$50,000 in 2022-2023
“I feel privileged and excited to lead this multidisciplinary project with the support of the Borrin Foundation, bringing diverse perspectives together to deepen our understanding of death, dying and the law, and to help people and whānau understand and access the rights and protections the law provides at the end of life and beyond.”