Dr Aisling McMahon was invited to deliver a paper at a two-day workshop organised by Prof TT Arvind and Prof Jenny Steele in York University held on 11th and 12th January 2019. The workshop entitled ‘Contract Law and the Legislature: Autonomy, expectations, and the making of legal doctrine’ brought together a collection of papers focusing specifically on contract statutes, seeking to produce an altered and more complete picture of modern contract law.
Dr McMahon’s paper ‘Contracts and the Human Body: Mapping the moral limits’ focused on the United Kingdom’s Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985, as amended, which states that arrangements related to surrogacy are unenforceable. The paper considered the origins and justifications for the unenforceability of surrogacy arrangements in this context and whether this provision was still fit for purpose given the modern-day realities of surrogacy, and calls for reform of the legal framework in the UK.
Dr McMahon writes primarily on patent and medical law. Her most recent work in the medical law context includes two articles forthcoming in 2019 on the topic of abortion access written with Dr Bríd Ní Ghrainne (Judicial Studies Institute, Masaryk University). The first article ‘After the 8th: Ireland, Abortion, and International Law’ forthcoming in Medico-Legal Journal of Ireland examines Ireland's new laws on abortion after the repeal of the 8th amendment and their compatibility with international law. A pre-proof version of this article is available here. The second article entitled 'Abortion in Northern Ireland and the ECHR: Reflections from the UK Supreme Court' has been accepted for publication in the International and Comparative Law Quarterly (ICLQ), a pre-proof version is available here.
Dr McMahon is a lecturer in Maynooth University Department of Law and teaches equity and trusts and a new module on Contemporary issues in Medicine and the Law.