The project aims to address three foundational questions which will help to frame a comprehensive approach to previously neglected aspects of legal capacity law reform. These questions are as follows:

1. What constitutes an exercise of legal agency from an individual?

2. What are the justifiable limits on individual agency which can be imposed by the State and apply to everyone, regardless of disability or decision-making ability?

3. How can we ascertain whether an individual is giving free and informed consent (necessary to make an action legally binding), without engaging in a functional assessment of that person’s mental capacity?

Working papers addressing these questions are available on the publications page of this blog. The papers were published as part of a special issue of the International Journal of Law in Context in March 2017.