To start with, in many cases the time taken to get a court decision would be too long and cause more harm than good. At the same time, doctors are calling for guidelines. Some of these requests come because they want to know what best practice is, others are generated by a desire to protect themselves from legal action should things go wrong. The problem with guidelines is that they are often too inflexible to be in the best interest of the individual patient. It is often more useful to provide a decision-making framework that draws from accepted ethical boundaries.
Legal judgements made in courts can be even more restrictive.
If a judge decides that, on the basis of the presented evidence, a certain course of treatment needs to be followed, then it is difficult to make any changes if the doctors decide that the diagnosis was wrong, or the treat-ment is not having the desired effect. As British Law adapts to conform more with European systems, there will be an increasing tendency for decisions to be made according to prescribed 'rule books' rather than individual judgements being made about individual cases and situations. Further reading Withdrawing and Withholding Treatment.