Treating Teenagers: Hidden reasoning of Australian judges and medical practitioners in determining disagreements involving young people with serious medical conditions

It is notoriously difficult to identify reasoning approaches of judges and doctors in serious medical treatment cases involving adolescent minors. Judgments are brief, often urgently delivered ex tempore, and few cases come to court for determination. There is little access to doctors’ reasoning in cases that do not come to court. This thesis offers a first-of-its-kind empirical study involving judges across Australia’s Supreme and Family Courts and paediatric doctors from two large tertiary hospitals. It presents a typology revealing decision-makers' hidden reasoning, and examines these approaches against the law, alternative decision-making models in jurisprudential theory and ethics, and other implications.