A book launch and conversation with Dr Beverley Clough, author of the book The Spaces of Mental Capacity Law: Moving Beyond Binaries.
Do mental capacity laws serve the people they are meant to empower? What do the ideas and values underpinning these laws tell us about the way liberal jurisdiction conceptualises mental capacity and (dis)ability?
Situating the 2005 Mental Capacity Act in its historical and legal context, Dr Clough investigates the conceptual and legal binaries that underpin it. As she shows, such binaries as capacity/incapacity, disabled/non-disabled, and empower/protect make for a simplistic and coarse framework, unfit to deal with the complexities of human subjectivity and mental capacity. By delving into the spatial boundaries that this framework draws around individuals, institutions, and professionals, she mounts a forceful challenge to the problematic ideals underpinning mental capacity law. In the process, she issues a clarion call for profound conceptual change both within and beyond legal theory.