Definitions of Death in European Organ Exchange: Legal Conflict and Constitutional Limits

The Harvard European Law Association is pleased to host Paul Bidmon for a lunch talk on Monday, March 2, from 12:30 to 1:15 p.m. in Hauser Hall 102. Paul Bidmon is a legal research associate and PhD candidate at the Chair for Public Law, Health Law and Legal Philosophy (Prof. Dr. Stefan Huster) at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany and has been a Visiting Researcher at The Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown, in 2024.

Although the European legal space is marked by dense constitutional interaction and a broadly shared commitment to human dignity and fundamental rights, the legal frameworks for determining the end of life remain diverse. These thresholds, which are decisive for the capacity to bear fundamental rights, cannot be determined by medical evidence alone; they rest on normative and metaphysical premises about legal personhood that can legitimately differ across and within nations. Using the example of intra-European organ exchange, this talk outlines how such divergences generate conflicts between national, especially constitutional, laws even within a region of dense constitutional dialogue and mutual influence. This represents a conflict-of-laws scenario that is increasingly exceptional within today’s European legal space. The talk examines the authority a legal order may claim when confronted with the domestic effects of another jurisdiction’s death determination and analyzes how acknowledging the normative dimension of such determinations could foster principled tolerance and stronger cross-border cooperation.

Lunch will be provided.

Monday, March 2, 2026, 12:30 to 1:15 p.m.

Harvard Law School, Hauser Hall 102