Values and Disorder in Mental Capacity Law

Cressida Auckland is Assistant Professor in Law at the Law School, London School of Economics and Political Science. Cressida's research focuses on mental capacity and end-of-life decision-making. She has published extensively on the topic of medical decision-making for minors, with her publications featuring in the Law Quarterly Review, Modern Law Review, Cambridge Law Journal and Medical Law Review. She is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, and an Academic Fellow of the Middle Temple.

• Introduction; 1. A value-neutral understanding of capacity; 2. An essential role for values in assessments of capacity; 3. Why disorder matters; 4. Accommodating values in the test of capacity; 5. Reflecting ambiguity on the cusp of capacity; 6. Softening the capacity cliff-edge; Conclusion; Appendices; Bibliography.

'An accurate and comprehensive evaluation of the English mental capacity legal framework grounded in doctrinal analysis and supplemented by empirical research. Though the case law analysed will be largely familiar to those working in mental capacity law, Auckland's synthesis of the cases and related literature offers new insights into the gulf between the law and practice in this area.' Urania Chiu, Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies