Of The Pilgrim's Progress, Huckleberry Finn said that he ‘read considerable in it now and then’, and that ‘the statements was interesting, but tough’. To the quite small body of persons who have ‘read in’ them, the documents constituting the Energy Charter Treaty may or may not have been interesting, but they will surely have found them tough. In contrast with the ICSID Convention, which as a text is a masterpiece of multinational drafting even though as a practical source of rules it lacks spine, the Energy Charter Treaty is an uncouth thicket from which even an interested person could well recoil. Nevertheless, although the field of view is narrow and highly particular, it is important in theory as well as in practice, and calls for an informed, readable and scholarly monograph. This is what the present work supplies.

Since this is a foreword, not a review, I must with difficulty abstain from offering a personal appraisal of international energy law and practice; of dispute resolution in that field; and of the crippling inconsistencies in the jurisprudence of bilateral investment treaty disputes, now apparently incurable. The books get longer and longer, and so do the awards, whilst colloquia, study groups, task forces and the like continue to proliferate, often producing book-length records of their proceedings; yet in the absence of a doctrine of binding precedent there is currently no means of imposing order where it is needed.

Forewords do not usually begin with a disclaimer, but there is a reason here, for Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy uncompromisingly addresses themes which colleagues of the present writer, and occasionally he himself, have tackled in the past, and may have to tackle together in the future. Comity and courtesy make it necessary to avoid the implication that the opinions expressed in this valuable work are necessarily shared in full. This being said, it is a pleasure to welcome a contribution to what is, at present, the most intellectually demanding, the most ethically challenging, and the most important for its contingent effects as well as for its immediate practical impact, of all the points on the line where law, medicine, belief and reason intersect.

The image of the slippery slope is often called up as a warning to those who take an easy step without looking to see where the next may lead, but it also reminds us that in this area the concepts themselves are slippery, escaping sideways from the effort to grasp them. The overlapping problems of accelerated death demand intellectual honesty rather than unfocussed right-thinking, and an emphasis on duties as well as individual rights.

The steepness of the slope, and its treacherous footing, are often concealed by an emollient vocabulary. Thus, the expression ‘best interests’ conveys an upbeat meaning, at odds with its more chilling implications.