Book review: Exploring the Spaces of Mental Capacity Law In Conversation with the Author: The Space of Mental Capacity Law: Moving Beyond Binaries

Abstract

In England and Wales, the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005 provides the legal framework to determine whether an adult lacks capacity to make a decision for themselves, and if they do, what course of action should be taken in accordance with their best interests.1 The MCA purports to empower adults with ‘mental impairments, or disturbances in the functioning of the mind or brain’, to take decisions for themselves, and to protect them where they are unable to do so. Yet, the powers that the Act grants to its decisionmakers are significant, and under the auspices of best interests, individuals deemed to lack capacity may see care arrangements made for them which deprive of them of their liberty, or treatment imposed on them against their wishes. The operation of the MCA has attracted criticism for its failure to recognise the relational nature of human decisionmaking,2 the prevailing dominance of medical decision-makers,3 and its focus on the lives or persons with disabilities. Clough’s book4 adds to this growing body of feminist and disability scholarship by analysing mental capacity law through the lens of assemblages. This focuses on the conceptual spaces and context of mental capacity law, the norms that are created and/or reinforced through it, and the impact on the individuals that capacity law affects. In each chapter, the book calls attention to the binaries which the legislation relies upon and how they are reinforced in its interpretation and application. Clough forcefully argues that