McGill Law Journal ~ Revue de droit de McGill
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW: CAPACITY,
AUTONOMY, AND VULNERABILITY
Margaret Isabel Hall*
This paper examines mental capacity as a
medico-legal social construct and concludes
that, while the construct works reasonably well
in the contexts of property-related transactions
and health-treatment decisions, it is deeply
problematic and is a source of dysfunction in
the context of guardianship and guardianship-
type interventions. There is nothing natural,
compelling, or necessary about the concept of
mental capacity, and the author proposes an al-
ternate construct more consistent with the pur-
pose of guardianship and guardianship-type in-
terventions: vulnerability. As the capacity con-
struct is deeply enmeshed with a traditional
liberal theory of autonomy
(the capacity-
autonomy equation or paradigm), so the vulner-
ability construct described here is more con-
sistent with a theory of relational autonomy.
The author contends that the conceptual fram-
ing provided by the capacity-autonomy para-
digm in the guardianship context has precluded
the coherent theorization of vulnerability, and
she suggests a more coherent framework for do-
ing so by drawing on theories of equity and rela-
tional autonomy.
Ce texte examine la capacit mentale
comme construction sociale mdico-lgale et
conclut que, bien que cette construction fonc-
tionne raisonnablement bien dans les contextes
lis aux transactions relatives la proprit et
aux dcisions de traitement en sant, elle est
trs problmatique et constitue une source de
dysfonctionnement dans le cadre de la tutelle et
des autres interventions de ce type. Il ny a rien
de naturel, de convaincant, ou de ncessaire re-
lativement au concept de capacit mentale.
Lauteure propose une autre construction plus
conforme lobjet de la tutelle et des autres in-
terventions de ce type : la vulnrabilit. Comme
la construction de la capacit est intimement
lie une thorie librale traditionnelle de
l’autonomie (lquation ou le paradigme capaci-
t-autonomie), la vulnrabilit dcrite ici est
une construction plus cohrente avec une tho-
rie de lautonomie relationnelle. Lauteure af-
firme que le cadre conceptuel fourni par le pa-
radigme des capacits dautonomie dans le con-
texte de tutelle a empch la thorisation coh-
rente de la vulnrabilit et elle suggre un
cadre plus cohrent pour le faire en sappuyant
sur les thories de lquit et de lautonomie re-
lationnelle.
* LL.B., LL.M.; Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Thompson Rivers University; Inter-
disciplinary Studies Graduate Program, University of British Columbia. I would like to
acknowledge Professors Mary Anne Bobinski, Martha Donnelly, and Deborah O’ Con-
nor at the University of British Columbia for their ongoing support of my intellectual
adventures, and Dr. Elias Cohen for his belief. I would also like to express my gratitude
to The Vulnerability Initiative at Emory University, Martha Fineman, Director, and all
participants in the 2011 workshop Beyond Rights: Vulnerability and Justice.
Citation: (2012) 58:1 McGill LJ 61 ~ Rfrence : (2012) 58:1 RD McGill 61
Margaret Isabel Hall 2012
62 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
Introduction
I.
Autonomy and the Sovereign Self: The Role of
the Mental Capacity Threshold
II. Conceptualizing the Mental Capacity Construct
III. Capacity in Context: Property, Health, and
Guardianship
A. Property-Related Transactions
B. Health Treatment
C. Guardianship and Guardianship-Type Interventions
IV. After Capacity: Theorizing Vulnerability
A. Situating Vulnerability: Relational Autonomy
B. Vulnerability and Public Response: The Problem
of Definition
Conclusion
63
64
70
74
75
77
79
83
86
88
91
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
63
Introduction
Mental capacity1 is a social construct clothed in the naturalizing lan-
guage of a biological fact. Like all social constructs, mental capacity per-
sists and is used because it works as an effective mechanism for achieving
a valuable social purpose or, more precisely, set of purposes. Mental ca-
pacity is an especially useful mechanism in the adult guardianship con-
text, allowing for the (apparent) reconciliation of socially valuable, but
ideologically inconsistent, purposes: the legally enforced and legally en-
forceable protection of individual autonomy2 and the realization of im-
portant social policy goals that seem to require interference with that au-
tonomy.3 This dual function is especially useful where the subject of the
guardianship inquiry is an older adult who was previously considered to
possess mental capacity, in which case the loss of autonomy is put in is-
sue. These cases will almost always involve a diagnosis of dementia, itself
a contested construct, and the simultaneously authoritative and mystify-
ing language of biomedicine will play a crucial role in the finding of
mental capacityor incapacityconferring a particular quality of out-
there-ness4 or truth.
Mental capacity is neither natural nor inevitable, however, and the in-
coherence of mental capacity in the primarily medical, embodied settings
where capacity is substantively evaluated (an evaluation that is subse-
quently relied on for the purposes of legal action) is a source of significant
confusion and dissatisfaction. That incoherence, I suggest, makes the as-
sessment of abstract mental capacity that is required by adult guardian-
ship legislationperhaps especially by modern, decision-specific adult
guardianship legislationsubstantively impossible, fuelling the endless
search for the perfect capacimeter and the tensions between the medical
professionals charged with finding capacity and the legal professionals
who wring their hands at medicines apparent inability to get it right.
That inability, most often attributed to the avowed paternalism of the
1 The word capacity is used in this article as synonymous and interchangeable with
competence and capability. This is consistent with both general or everyday usage
and legal usage, and is adopted for that reason, although a distinction has traditionally
been drawn between mental capacity as a clinical assessment and competence as a le-
gal determination: see e.g. Alec Buchanan, Mental Capacity, Legal Competence and
Consent to Treatment (2004) 97:9 Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 415 at 415.
2 As understood within the liberal paradigm and ideology, in terms of liberty and self-
rule.
3 Mental capacity in the context of health care decision making plays a very different
role, consistent with the roots of the health care consent requirement in the ancient tort
of trespass to the person. See the discussion below.
4 Jonathan Potter, Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction
(London, UK: Sage, 1996) at 150.
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medical profession, necessarily flows from the mental capacity construct
itself.
Furthermore, I suggest, the ideological paradigm in which the capaci-
ty construct is situated and of which it is an essential partthe liberal
autonomy idealis itself, in this context, deeply problematic and even
cruel. If we agree with William James that [t]ruth happens to an idea,5
the idea of mental capacity, for the purposes of adult guardianship, should
no longer be treated as a real or true description of the world and its
workings, allowing instead for the construction of a new and more worka-
ble truth in this context.6
I. Autonomy and the Sovereign Self: The Role of the Mental Capacity
Threshold
Despite the ubiquitousness of autonomy talk across discourses,
[a]bout the only features held constant from one author to another are
that autonomy is a feature of persons and that it is a desirable quality to
have.7 So what does autonomy mean in, and for, the law? Martha Fine-
5 For James and other pragmatic philosophers such as John Dewey, cited below, an idea
becomes true, is made true (William James, Pragmatism, ed by Bruce Kuklick (Indi-
anapolis: Hackett, 1981) at 92, cited in Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philoso-
phy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989) at
65) through the active and ongoing reconstruction of experienced situations (Larry A
Hickman, Deweys Theory of Inquiry in Larry A Hickman, ed, Reading Dewey: Inter-
pretations for a Postmodern Generation (Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press,
1998) 166 at 167).
6 John Dewey described this process of truth revision and construction as warranted as-
sertibility, an evolution of the true and the real in response to the environment, which
should be understood as analogous to evolution in the natural world:
If ideas, meanings, conceptions, notions, theories, systems are instrumental
to an active reorganization of the given environment, to a removal of some
specific trouble and perplexity, then the test of their validity and value lies in
accomplishing this work. If they succeed in their office, they are reliable,
sound, valid, good, true. If they fail to clear up confusion, to eliminate defects,
if they increase confusion, uncertainty and evil when they are acted upon,
then are they false. Confirmation, corroboration, verification lie in works,
consequences. … By their fruits shall ye know them (Reconstruction in Phi-
losophy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948) at 156).
7 Gerald Dworkin, The Concept of Autonomy in John Christman, ed, The Inner Citadel:
Essays on Individual Autonomy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) 54 at 54-55
[Dworkin, Concept of Autonomy; Christman, Inner Citadel]. Dworkin notes:
It is used sometimes as an equivalent of liberty (positive or negative in Ber-
lins terminology), sometimes as equivalent to self-rule or sovereignty, some-
times as identical with freedom of the will. It is equated with dignity, integri-
ty, individuality, independence, responsibility, and self-knowledge. It is iden-
tified with qualities of self-assertion, with critical reflection, with freedom
from obligation, with absence of external causation, with knowledge of ones
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
65
man has identified autonomy, defined in terms of freedom from interfer-
ence by others, as one of the foundational myths of the American legal
and political system, reflected in the Declaration of Independence, the US
Constitution, and the US Bill of Rights.8 As an idea associated with liber-
ty, freedom from interference, and self-control, the Supreme Court of
Canada has found a degree of personal autonomy over important deci-
sions intimately affecting [ones] private li[fe] to be included in the right
to life, liberty, and security of the person protected by section 7 of the Ca-
nadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.9 Autonomy as personal liberty is
also fundamental to the common law and to the personal rights to non-
interference protected by the torts of trespass to the person, trespass to
property, and false imprisonment.
Autonomy has a very specific meaning and function, as it relates to
the legal idea of mental capacity. Capacity, in law, serves as the effective
threshold of autonomy, dividing the autonomous, on the one side, from
the non-autonomous, on the other, on the basis of an individuals ability to
engage in the process of rational (and therefore autonomous) thought, ex-
plained as the ability to exercise ones will to reflect upon, and choose be-
tween desires, and to adopt those chosen as ones own.10 On neither side
of the threshold is the law formally concerned with the substantively au-
tonomous quality11 of the individuals thought or action. Evaluating the
own interests. It is related to actions, to beliefs, to reasons for acting, to rules,
to the will of other persons, to thoughts and to principles (ibid at 54).
8 Martha Albertson Fineman, The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency (New York:
New Press, 2004) at 18. Fineman states:
Self-government (autonomy) is the ideal and defines the individual subject of liberal
political discourse. …
… Individual liberty interests are what are protectedautonomy entails
being left alone to satisfy our own needs and provide for our own families
without undue restraint (ibid at 18-19).
9 R v Morgentaler, [1988] 1 SCR 30 at 171, 44 DLR (4th) 385, Wilson J, concurring (the
majority agreed with Justice Wilson on this point); Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act
1982 (UK), 1982, c 11, reprinted in RSC 1985, App II.
10 See Harry G Frankfurt, Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person (1971) 68:1
The Journal of Philosophy 5 at 6-7; Gerald Dworkin, Autonomy and Behaviour Con-
trol (1976) 6:1 The Hastings Center Report 23 at 25; Dworkin, Concept of Autonomy,
supra note 7 at 54.
11 Described by Gerald Dworkin as embracing the qualities of dignity, integrity, individu-
ality, independence, responsibility, self-knowledge, self-assertion, critical reflection,
freedom from obligation, absence of external causation, and knowledge of ones own in-
terests: ibid. It has been argued that the problem of socializationwhat N. Stoljar has
described as the feminist intuitiondictates against an idea of autonomy without the
indicia of substantive autonomy: see Natalie Stoljar, Autonomy and the Feminist Intu-
ition in Catriona Mackenzie & Natalie Stoljar, eds, Relational Autonomy: Feminist
66 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
substantive choices and actions of those who have capacity is conceptual-
ized as actively undermining their now established autonomy,12 while ac-
tions and choices on the other side of the threshold can never be autono-
mous, whatever their content. Understood in these terms, the autono-
mous thought process parallels the dominant medical paradigm of cogni-
tive capacity, in which the physically healthy and unimpaired brain is
taken to possess the capacity for rational (and therefore autonomous)
thought, which may then be impaired by disease or injury or, in some cas-
es, may be impaired from birth.13
Recognizing and locating autonomy in the process of self-rule making,
rather than in the content of the rules made, avoids assigning social value
to particular choices and ways of living, thereby limiting the tyranny of
the majority and paternalistic interference by the state.14 Indeed, so long
as the decision-making process is autonomous, the protection of individ-
ual autonomy requires a value-neutral stance in relation to the substance
of choices and behaviours. Public, and even private, indifference to the
substantively non-autonomous, private choices and behaviours of others is
conceptualized as essential to the protection of individual autonomy. The
characterization of a matter as public works to change this dynamic; the
characterization of children and their protection from harm as matters of
public interest justifies the scrutiny and evaluation of the substantive de-
cisions and actions of their caregivers, for example. This characterization
Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000) 94; Paul Benson, Autonomy and Oppressive Socialization (1991) 17:3 So-
cial Theory and Practice 385; Sarah Buss, Autonomy Reconsidered (1994) 19 Midwest
Studies in Philosophy 95; Sigurdur Kristinsson, The Limits of Neutrality: Toward a
Weakly Substantive Account of Autonomy (2000) 30:2 Canadian Journal of Philosophy
257.
12 And so, substantively self-destructive choices (e.g., staying with an abusive spouse;
signing over your house to a new acquaintance; living in squalor) may be read as au-
tonomous because of their opposition to social norms and values, as expressions of self-
interest that need not be explicable to anyone outside of the self (consistent with au-
tonomous mans self-definition in opposition to the social). The right knowingly to be
foolish is not unimportant; the right to voluntarily assume risks is to be respected. The
State has no business meddling with either. The dignity of the individual is at stake
(Koch (Re) (1997), 35 OR (3d) 71 at 76 (available on CanLII) (Gen Div), Quinn J).
13 And autonomy is now the transcendent value in medicine, as in law: see Paul Root
Wolpe, The Triumph of Autonomy in American Bioethics: A Sociological View in
Raymond DeVries & Janardan Subedi, eds, Bioethics and Society: Constructing the Eth-
ical Enterprise (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998) 38.
14 The problem of values and value judgment for theories of autonomy is crucial to the
idea of theoretical autonomy, codified as legal rights, as an effective counterweight to
what J. S. Mill referred to long ago as the tyranny of the majority: John Stuart Mill,
On Liberty, ed by Edward Alexander (Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Press, 1999) at 46-
47. See also Ronald Dworkin, Liberalism in Stuart Hampshire, ed, Public and Private
Morality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978) 113 at 127-28.
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
67
is also essential to the criminal law, in which matters that are deemed
criminal, and therefore subject to the states criminal law power, are those
that are identified as harming public morality and public safety. (And so,
while my self-ruling autonomy is undeniably abridged by the criminal
prohibition on polygamy, for example, that restriction is theoretically jus-
tified by the threat my actions would pose to public order.)15 Mental capac-
ity, in contrast, remains private; legal interference is justified only where
self-rule is, or has become, factually impossible. In the void, the state has
a responsibility to act.
In the context of property-related transactions, donor autonomy has
an ideologically potent, but effectively symbolic, role. The idea of unfet-
tered individual liberty to dispose of ones property as one wishes, wheth-
er wisely or foolishly, is a fundamentaleven sacredtenet of Anglo-
Canadian law.16 The individual autonomy at stake in these cases is, how-
ever, very different in kind and quality from autonomy as it is engaged in
the other contexts considered here. Unlike those other contexts, the deci-
sion in question is pastthere is no question of future constraintand
there is no continuing or potential physical impact on the person in ques-
tion. Furthermore, the donor in the majority of cases involving discrete
property transactions will not be an actual participant in the proceedings;
he or she will be dead or incapable, and the real contestants will be those
who benefit from the transaction and those who would benefit were it set
aside. Autonomy, here, is symbolically important but, in fact, of no real
value to the absent donor.
In the context of health care decisions, by contrast, the subject of the
capacity finding is very much present, and the decision whether to pro-
ceed with a particular course of treatment will have the most direct im-
pact on that individual. Autonomy, in this context, is bound up with those
physical-integrity interests that have long been protected by the trespass
torts, which, prior to legislation in this area, created and enforced the re-
quirement of consent to health treatment. As the Supreme Court of Can-
ada explained in Starson v. Swayze:
Ordinarily at law, the value of autonomy prevails over the value
of effective medical treatment. No matter how ill a person, no matter
how likely deterioration or death, it is for that person and that per-
son alone to decide whether to accept a proposed medical treatment.
15 This is the rationale for the prohibition on polygamy in the Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c
C-46, s 293.
16 See e.g. Sheena Grattan & Heather Conway Testamentary Conditions in Restraint of
Religion in the Twenty-First Century: An Anglo-Canadian Perspective (2005) 50:3
McGill LJ 511 at 516, citing Philip Hoser, Family Provision for Non-spouse Depend-
ants (1984) 14 Fam Law 171 at 171 ([t]estamentary freedom has been described as
the corner-stone of the common law).
68 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
However, where the individual is incompetent, or lacks the capacity,
to make the decision, the law may override his or her wishes.17
Autonomy is significantly more problematic in the context of guardi-
anship, which necessarilyas required by the very purpose of guardian-
ship and guardianship-type interventionsproceeds from a finding of pro-
jected, ongoing loss of capacity, concerning ongoing, non-particularized
courses of activityas opposed to the ascertained and discrete decisions,
past and pending, at issue in the property and health contexts. These are
necessary features of guardianship interventions derived from their un-
derlying purpose, a purpose which has not changed (because it cannot
change) during the last fifteen years of guardianship reform and the in-
troduction of co-decision-making models: to provide a social response to
the needs of some individuals for ongoing assistance in order to prevent
the loss of assetsand the hardships attendant on impecuniosity in old
ageand physical harm.
Formally, of course, the loss of personhood is no longer considered to
follow a finding of incapacity for guardianship purposes in law or in medi-
cine. At the more pervasive social level, however, the taken-for-granted
embodiment of autonomythe rational,
independent, and self-
maximizing figure of the autonomous mannecessarily and automati-
cally works to depersonalize the post-capacity individual. A person found
to lack capacity now and for the projected future is effectively and neces-
sarily positioned as a non-person, a failed (and not merely misruled)
state.18 Exhortations to recognize personhood, identity, and value in per-
17 2003 SCC 32 at para 7, [2003] 1 SCR 722, McLachlin CJC, dissenting. The issue in the
Starson case was whether the Ontario Capacity and Consent Board had acted unrea-
sonably in finding that Mr. Starson was incapable of consenting to medical treatment.
The majority found that the board had allowed their perception of Starsons best inter-
ests to improperly influence their finding; the dissent found that the board had not done
so, and had properly confined its inquiry to the question of capacity. The essential
premise, as eloquently explained by Chief Justice McLachlin in the passage cited, un-
derlies the reasons of both majority and dissent.
18 Joel Feinberg has distinguished between the exercise of autonomy[t]he actual condi-
tion of self-governmentand the threshold notion of the capacity for self-government,
drawing an analogy between the misruled person and the badly governed state (Au-
tonomy in Christman, Inner Citadel, supra note 7, 27 at 30). The threshold for capacity
is defined as the ability to make rational choices [and] interpreted [so] as to exclude in-
fants, insane persons, the severely retarded, the senile, and the comatose, and to in-
clude virtually everyone else (ibid at 28). The misruled person may, in fact, enjoy little
substantive autonomy, but like a badly governed nation, he may retain his sovereign
independence nevertheless (ibid at 30). Feinberg suggests that autonomy, derived
from the Greek for self and rule, may have originally been used to apply to states
and that personal autonomy should be understood as a political metaphor(ibid at
27). Three of the five categories on Feinbergs listthe insane, the severely retarded,
and the senileare not self-evident but must be identified through some process of
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
69
sons with dementia (the senile and therefore non-self-governing, in the
language of Feinbergs analysis of autonomy and the autonomous) call, in
effect, for the transposition of the individuals ghost as he or she existed in
the past onto his or her present, embodied form.19 The manifestations of
illness are separated from the real person underneath. This is the re-
sponse required by the terms of the capacity-autonomy equation and is,
within those terms, the only means of recognizing some continuing form
of personhood, and thereby securing the rights to which persons are enti-
tled, after capacity is lost. In so doing, I suggest that the capacity-
autonomy equation effectively precludes a deeper understanding of per-
sonhood as embodied after capacity is lost.20
One response to the drastic impact of a finding of incapacity in the
context of adult guardianship has been to minimize the likelihood that a
person will be found to lack capacity, through legislation or through in-
struments of medical evaluation.21 This approach, while theoretically
maximizing autonomy, frustrates the fundamental purpose of guardian-
ship: to provide ongoing assistance in order to prevent harm. Another ap-
proach has been to articulate more precisely the kind of decision that an
individual is expected to need ongoing assistance with, in an attempt to
resemble, insofar as possible, the kind of discrete, pending decisions at is-
sue in the health care context.22 In reality, however, persons are unlikely
to need guardianship assistance only with certain discrete and singular
types of decisions and not with others. At the same time, persons who
need assistance only with decision making, and who are willing to accept
that assistance, will almost certainly have made private and informal ar-
rangements for doing so without the need for a guardianship order.23 This
phenomenon almost certainly explains the negligible use of the co-
evaluation (although for many, the senile will be perceived as constituting a material
grouping as fixed and self-evident as infants or the comatose).
19 See Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Dementia: Ethical Issues (Cambridge, UK: Cam-
bridge Publishers, 2009) ([t]he person with dementia remains the same, equally val-
ued, person throughout the course of their illness, regardless of the extent of the chang-
es in their cognitive and other functions at 21, box 2.1, component 6).
20 Working against the personhood in dementia approach advanced by Tom Kitwood
and others: see Tom Kitwood, Dementia Reconsidered: The Person Comes First (Maid-
enhead, UK: Open University Press, 1997).
21 See Deborah OConnor, Personhood and Dementia: Toward a Relational Framework
for Assessing Decisional Capacity (2010) 5:3 The Journal of Mental Health Training,
Education and Practice 22 [OConnor, Relational Framework].
22 See Robert Gordon, Simon N Verdun-Jones & Donald J MacDougall, Reforms in the
Field of Adult Guardianship Law: A Comment on Recent Developments (1987) 6:1 Can
J Fam L 149 at 152. See also Sarah Burningham, Developments in Canadian Adult
Guardianship and Co-decision-making Law (2009) 18 Dal J Leg Stud 119 at 138-44.
23 See MB Kapp, Decisional Capacity in Theory and Practice: Legal Process Versus
Bumbling Through (2002) 6:4 Aging & Mental Health 413 at 414.
70 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
decision maker order where it is available, in Saskatchewan, in favour of
a more plenary guardianship).24
I suggest another, more radicalbut ultimately more effective
approach to the dilemma of the capacity-autonomy equation in the guard-
ianship-intervention context: the removal of capacity as the criteria for in-
tervention. The personhood and autonomy (understood through the theo-
retical lens of relational autonomy, discussed below) of those individuals
who fall below the capacity threshold can be given recognition only, I sug-
gest, where the threshold itself is removed.
This suggestion appears less extreme on a close and denaturalizing
examination of how the mental capacity construct is found in this context.
I will argue that there is nothing inevitable or necessary about capacity
nothing real that must be respected, obeyed, or followedand that, if the
construct in this context isas I assertdeeply problematic, an alternate
construct can, and must, be developed. I suggest that the provision of as-
sistance with kindness (i.e., listening carefully and responding to the
thoughts, fears, and wishes of others), and with respect, thoughtfulness,
and sophistication regarding the kind of assistance that will be most help-
ful, is most appropriately understood as a social response to vulnerability.
Accordingly, vulnerability provides a more coherent and workable con-
struct in this context.
II. Conceptualizing the Mental Capacity Construct
As a concept in law and in medicine, mental capacity refers generally
to a persons intellectual ability to understand and, on the basis of that
understanding, to make a decision. Without the required, underlying
mental capacity, a persons apparent choice is conceptualized as not, truly,
his or her own and genuine decision. In this way, the lack of mental ca-
pacity creates one of a limited number of exceptions to the general legal
rule of non-interference with personal choices, however foolish, as a struc-
tural guarantor of personal liberty or autonomy. (Indeed, non-recognition
protects the autonomy of the individual by refusing to enforce or recognize
decisions that are not, truly, his or her own.)
Defined in these terms, mental capacity is essentially cognitive, de-
scribing the ability to make a rational decision25 as a real, interior mental
24 See Doug Surtees, The Evolution of Co-decision-making in Saskatchewan (2010) 73:1
Sask L Rev 75 at 91-92 (discussing a review of 446 applications made under Saskatch-
ewans Adult Guardianship and Co-decision-making Act between 2001, when the act
came into force, and 2008).
25 See Susanna L Blumenthal, The Default Legal Person (2007) 54:5 UCLA L Rev 1135
at 1138-39.
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
71
quality, although the mentally capable person may choose not to make a
rational decision as a matter of personal preference and expression. The
medical profession, therefore, as the designated experts in matters related
to cognition, will always play a key and authoritative role in the evalua-
tion of capacity, even where the ultimate purpose of that evaluation is, in
the formal sense, legal (e.g., appointing a guardian, setting aside a proper-
ty transaction, deciding who will consent to medical treatment).
The characterization of cognitive mental capacity as a hard and medi-
cally ascertainable fact is key to the way in which capacity is found, or not
found, in the law. (Although as we shall see, that process works different-
ly in different legal contexts, where the finding of capacity serves different
purposes.) The modernizing, decision-based trend in adult guardianship
legislation, as opposed to the traditional, diagnosis-based approach to ca-
pacity and capacity assessment, retains and refines this core understand-
ing of mental capacity as a scientifically provable bio-fact: the modern
question is whether an individual has the cognitive capacity to make a
particular kind of decision, in contrast to the more global incapacity im-
plied by the dementia diagnosis in the traditional model. Parallel devel-
opments in medical approaches to mental capacity assessment, including
the assessment of performance in addition to the measurement of deci-
sion-domain specific capacities through cognitive testing tools, are simi-
larly presented as providing a more accurate account of the underlying
biofact.
From a legal perspective, X has dementia appears to provide a satis-
fying account of the individuals internal mental process, without the need
for ideologically troubling references to the substantive nature of Xs
choices and behaviours (e.g., X is making large cash gifts to a young
woman he met online; X engages strangers in conversation about his
supposed affair with the Queen). The difficulty lies in the nature of the
dementia diagnosis, which unlike, for instance, a cancerous cell on a slide,
is arrived at through observation of a persons speech, actions, and behav-
iours (e.g., X is making large cash gifts to a young woman he met online
or X engages strangers in conversation about his supposed affair with the
Queen). Dr. Ys diagnosis is the end point of this process of observation
and categorization, of which diagnosis is the bare statement. The decisive
scientific and objective language of that diagnosislike the language of
the cell on the slideobscures, to the laws eye, the nature of the process
of observation that underlies it. In the language of autonomy, the bare di-
agnosis asserts a definitive and objective truth about the individuals abil-
ity to engage in an autonomous thought process. The process, of which the
diagnosis is the end result, necessarily depends on the diagnosed persons
substantive choices and behaviours, requiring judgment on the part of the
observer. This is not to say that dementia is meaningless; the concept
has meaning as a clustering of external indicia that are interpreted as in-
dicating something specific about the brain. But dementia must be under-
72 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
stood as a medical construct26 that gathers together and contains these
behavioural indicia within a discursive boundary, and through the lan-
guage of diagnosis, provides for some future action to take place (admit-
tance to a care facility, for example).
Cognitive tests such as the mini-mental state examination (MMSE)
and the MacArthur competence assessment tool-treatment (MacCAT-T),
where provided to support mere diagnosis, work in a similar way. As os-
tensibly objective, scientific measures, they result in rate-able scores that
obscure the evaluative processes behind them. These testing tools have
come under criticism from the medical community responsible for imple-
menting them27while retaining the character of medically ascertainable
bio-fact outside of that communityas insufficiently connected to the
kinds of decision-making capacity under evaluation.28 One response to
that criticism has been the identification of a more functional approach to
testing,29 including an assessment of performance (through patient and
26 See Bradley A Areheart, Disability Trouble (2011) 29:2 Yale L & Poly Rev 347 at 350-
52; Phil Brown, Naming and Framing: The Social Construction of Diagnosis and Ill-
ness [1995] Journal of Health and Social Behavior 34 at 36-38; Nancy Harding & Colin
Palfrey, The Social Construction of Dementia: Confused Professionals? (London, UK:
Jessica Kingsley, 1997).
27 See e.g. Timo Erkinjuntti et al, The Effect of Different Diagnostic Criteria on the Prev-
alence of Dementia (1997) 337:23 New Eng J Med 1667 at 1671-73.
28 See e.g. Lazare Benaroyo & Guy Widdershoven, Competence in Mental Health Care: A
Hermeneutic Perspective (2004) 12:4 Health Care Analysis 295 at 299-300; Torsten
Marcus Breden & Jochen Vollmann, The Cognitive Based Approach of Capacity As-
sessment in Psychiatry: A Philosophical Critique of the MacCAT-T (2004) 12:4 Health
Care Analysis 273.
29 Function, in this context, refers to a particular decision or decision set (financial deci-
sion making, for example), with the assessment focused on the individuals ability to
carry out this kind of decision. Jennifer Moye and her colleagues propose an assessment
model structured around six domains: medical condition; cognition; everyday function-
ing; individual values, preferences, and patterns; risk of harm and level of supervision
needed; and means to enhance capacity: Jennifer Moye et al, A Conceptual Model and
Assessment Template for Capacity Evaluation in Adult Guardianship (2007) 47:5 The
Gerontologist 591 at 594-97. See also American Bar Association Commission on Law
and Aging & American Psychological Association, Assessment of Older Adults with Di-
minished Capacity: A Handbook for Lawyers (Washington, DC: American Bar Associa-
tion, American Psychological Association, 2005) at 9-11 (Jennifer Moye served as editor
of this handbook). Guidelines issued by the Public Guardian and Trustee of British Co-
lumbia (Public Guardian and Trustee of BC in consultation with physicians and other
incapability assessors from throughout BC, Practice Guidelines for Certificate of Inca-
pability Assessments Under the Patients Property Act (2005) at 3, online:
capability Assessments]; Public Guardian and Trustee of British Columbia, Court and
Statutory Guardianship: The Patients Property Act and the Adult Guardianship Act
(Part 2) (An Updated Discussion Paper on Modernizing the Legal Framework), (2005)
at 14-16, online:
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
73
collateral interviews), alongside diagnosis and standardized cognitive-
screening-tool scoring, as best practice.30 Another is the continuing prolif-
eration of more decision-specific assessment tools.31 Importantly, these
developments in the medical process of capacity evaluation are presented
as providing a more accurate mirror or description of the individuals ob-
jective, internal statethe capacity bio-fact. From the laws perspective,
however, these medical developments are opaque and ultimately irrele-
vant; the medical finding of capacity (or the lack thereof) works as an au-
mental capacity (or competence) as inherently interactive, in which the patients exter-
nal environment and changing personal skills influence capacity at any point in time.
Thus, the patients use of resources, external and internal, should be considered in de-
termining competency status (M Donnelly, Financial and Personal Competency As-
sessments for British Columbia Seniors (1996) 38:9 British Columbia Medical Journal
484 at 485).
30 See Eike-Henner W Kluge, Competence, Capacity, and Informed Consent: Beyond the
Cognitive-Competence Model (2005) 24:3 Canadian Journal on Aging 295. Kluges
piece has both a legal and a medical aspect and relevance, like much of the legal litera-
ture dealing with mental capacity in civil cases. See also Alister Browne et al, On Lib-
erty for the Old (2002) 21:2 Canadian Journal on Aging 283; Terry Carney & David
Tait, Adult Guardianship: Narrative Readings in the Shadow of the Law? (1998) 21:2
Intl J L & Psychiatry 147; Public Guardian and Trustee of British Columbia, Incapa-
bility Assessments: A Review of Assessment and Screening Tools by Deborah OConnor
(Final Report),
(2009), online:
Borum et al, Evaluating Competencies: Forensic Assessments and Instruments, 2d ed
(New York: Kluwer Academic, 2003) at ch 3; Moye et al, supra note 29.
31 See Laura B Dunn et al, Assessing Decisional Capacity for Clinical Research or
Treatment: A Review of Instruments (2006) 163:8 American Journal of Psychiatry
1323; Grisso with Borum et al, supra note 30 at ch 2; Thomas Grisso, Paul S Appel-
baum & Carolyn Hill-Fotouhi, The MacCAT-T: A Clinical Tool to Assess Patients Ca-
pacities to Make Treatment Decisions (1997) 48:11 Psychiatric Services 1415; A Vel-
linga et al, Competence to Consent to Treatment of Geriatric Patients: Judgments of
Physicians, Family Members and the Vignette Method (2004) 19:7 International Jour-
nal of Geriatric Psychiatry 645; Edward D Sturman, The Capacity to Consent to
Treatment and Research: A Review of Standardized Assessment Tools (2005) 25:7
Clinical Psychology Review 954; Vanessa Raymont et al, The Inter-rater Reliability of
Mental Capacity Assessments (2007) 30:2 Intl J L & Psychiatry 112; Leo M Cooney,
Jr, et al, Who Can Stay at Home? Assessing the Capacity to Choose to Live in the
Community (2004) 164 Archives of Internal Medicine 357; K Cramer et al, Measuring
Awareness of Financial Skills: Reliability and Validity of a New Measure (2004) 8:2
Aging & Mental Health 161; Mavis M Kershaw & Lynne S Webber, Assessment of Fi-
nancial Competence (2008) 15:1 Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 40; James M Lai et
al, Everyday Decision-Making Ability in Older Persons with Cognitive Impairment
(2008) 16:8 American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 693; James M Lai & Jason Kar-
lawish, Assessing the Capacity to Make Everyday Decisions: A Guide for Clinicians
and an Agenda for Future Research (2007) 15:2 American Journal of Geriatric Psychi-
atry 101; Mathy Mezey et al, Decision-Making Capacity to Execute Health Care Proxy:
Development and Testing of Guidelines (2000) 48:2 Journal of the American Geriatrics
Society 179.
74 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
thoritative bio-fact, whether contained in the statement X has dementia
or in a function-based assessment report.
As neither the dementia diagnosis nor the cognitive score is analogous
to the paradigmatic bio-fact of the cancerous cell on the slide, nor is the
mental capacity construct. A finding of mental capacity is a particular
judgment about human beings that is made for one of several distinct
purposes, from which distinct and specific consequences flow (despite the
ceaseless medical quest for a more perfect, objective capacimeter).32 The
terms of the judgment will reflect the purposes for which it is made and
the consequences that flow from it. By terms, here, I mean the way in
which the judgment will be made, who will make it, and the information
that will be recognized as open to consideration, as well as the infor-
mation that will, in fact, be considered.
III. Capacity in Context: Property, Health, and Guardianship
Three distinct legal contexts in which mental capacity is positioned as
a central factor will be considered here: property-related transactions, in-
cluding wills; consent to medical or health treatment; and guardianship
and guardianship-type interventions. All three are civil (as opposed to
criminal) law contexts; all three are particularly likely to involve older
adults as their subjects, and accordingly, some form of dementiaitself a
contested constructis likely to be involved.
In each of these contexts, mental capacity works to permit an interfer-
ence with individual decision making (although the language of deci-
sions is truly apposite only in the context of property-related transfers
and transactions),33 which would otherwise be unjustified. In this way,
32 Marshall B Kapp & Douglas Mossman, Measuring Decisional Capacity: Cautions on
the Construction of a Capacimeter (1996) 2:1 Psychol Pub Poly & L 73 at 79: [t]he
idea of a capacimeter … resonates powerfully with relevant scientific findings and with
modern societys sometimes uncritical faith that human problems can be mastered
through quantification. A measure that produced a definitive, objective, numerical
readout addressing the ultimate capacity question in any treatment setting would carry
understandable (even if ultimately illusory) appeal.
33 Unlike mental capacity in the other contexts considered here, capacity in the health
care context is fundamentally concerned with consent, rather than decision making per
se. The patient has no right to decide on his or her course of medical treatment (in the
way that he or she can decide to dispose of property, to bathe or not bathe, or to ask
for housekeeping assistance); there is no right to demand a specific course of treatment
where the physician does not feel that it would be useful. The ability of the patient that
is in question is his or her capacity to consent to bodily interference that would, without
that consent, comprise a trespass to the person violating the individuals absolute right
to self-ownership. That common law right is also consistent and resonates with the Su-
preme Court of Canadas expansive interpretation of section 7 of the Canadian Charter
of Rights and Freedoms (supra note 9) to include a right to personal autonomy, integri-
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
75
and for this reason, mental capacity is often conceptualized as a thresh-
old. The implications of this threshold are most significant in the guardi-
anship context, both on a conceptual and a practical and embodied level
(i.e., the projected and continuing oversight of, and engagement in, the
day-to-day life of another). The social and ideological identification of ca-
pacity with autonomyand, on that basis, with personhood itself34
charges the finding of an ongoing, projected incapacity in a way that is
qualitatively distinct from the other contexts considered here.
A. Property-Related Transactions
In contrast to the other two contexts considered here, the capacity in-
quiry carried out for the purpose of setting aside or enforcing property-
related transactions is a legally controlled process. It is delivered by a
court, most likely in the absence of a decision-specific medical capacity as-
sessment preceding the impugned transaction. Evidence that capacity
was found by a lawyer or a notary preceding the transaction will be highly
relevant, although not conclusive. Corroborating non-medical evidence
will also be key and may come from a number of sources. The task in the-
se cases is to recreate, as completely as possible through a relatively thick
description, the circumstances of the original transaction. Evidence from
family members and other persons familiar with the donor at the time re-
garding the donors behaviour will be relevant, together with whatever
medical evidence is available.
These cases are notable for the lengthy, detailed, and comprehensive
narratives they provide, which are assembled from a broad reach of
sources. In the case of Re Elsie Jones,35 for example, which considered a
mothers capacity to transfer property into joint ownership with her
daughter, Maureen, the court noted that the donor had received legal ad-
vice from an experienced … solicitor, who would have been equally expe-
rienced in assessing client capacity. But the court went on to consider the
ty, and self-determination. See the discussion in Fleming v Reid (1991), 4 OR (3d) 74 at
88, (sub nom Fleming v Reid (Litigation guardian)) 82 DLR (4th) 298 (CA); Malette v
Shulman (1990), 72 OR (2d) 417 at 423-24, 67 DLR (4th) 321 (CA); St Georges Health
Care NHS Trust v S, [1998] 3 WLR 936 at 950-51, [1998] 3 All ER 673 CA (Eng).
34 See Frankfurt, supra note 10 at 11. Frankfurt uses the term wanton to describe hu-
mans who do not have the capacity to act rationally and therefore autonomously; the
class of wantons includes all nonhuman animals that have desires and all very young
children. Perhaps it also includes some adult human beings as well.
35 Canada Trust Co v Ringrose, 2009 BCSC 1723 at paras 81, 102-11 (available on Can-
LII) [Re Elsie Jones]. See also Hemminger (Guardian ad litem of) v Sande, 2001 BCSC
728 at paras 12-82, 39 ETR (2d) 196; Modonese v Delac Estate, 2011 BCSC 82 at paras
7-66, 65 ETR (3d) 254 [Modonese]; Banton v Banton (1998), 164 DLR (4th) 176 at 190-
208 (available on CanLII) (Ont Gen Div); Calvert (Litigation guardian of) v Calvert
(1997), 32 OR (3d) 281 at 284-93, 27 RFL (4th) 394 (Gen Div).
76 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
following factors in coming to a decision regarding Ms. Joness capacity at
the time of the transfer: the relative financial positions of the parties (the
mother, her daughter, and her two sons); the changing nature of Ms.
Joness relationship with Maureen; Ms. Joness diagnosis of vascular de-
mentia, in 2003, by Dr. Sheldon; Ms. Joness belief that her son was steal-
ing from her; the involvement of the police and the mental health team
following Ms. Joness complaints about her son; an interview with Dr.
Sheldon regarding Ms. Joness attitude toward her son; Dr. Sheldons
notes regarding long-standing dysfunction in the family, as recounted by
Maureen; Dr. Sheldons examination of Ms. Jones on the day following the
transfer (no mental capacity assessment was carried out preceding the
transfer); extensive evidence from Maureen regarding her understanding
of her mothers capacity throughout this period; and evidence provided by
Ms. Joness accountant regarding his encounters with Ms. Jones over a
number of years. At the conclusion of this lengthy and detailed narrative,
the court held that Ms. Jones did not have the required mental capacity at
the time of the transfer.
Many cases involving property-related transactions where the mental
capacity of the donor is impugned will also involve claims of undue influ-
ence36 (or, less frequently, unconscionability or both undue influence and
unconscionability). From the point of view of the plaintiffthe donor or
disappointed heirthe outcome of a successful undue influence or uncon-
scionability challenge and of a successful capacity challenge will be the
same: the transaction will be set aside, with a resulting redistribution of
assets. A claim of undue influence requires, doctrinally, a different and a
separate analysis, and the factors central to undue influencethe relative
weakness or vulnerability of the donor in the context of a relationship of
dependence (which raises the presumption of undue influence) or the ex-
istence of manipulation or coercion (actual undue influence)are, theoret-
ically, irrelevant to the capacity question.37 On a formal level, mental ca-
pacity and undue influenceor unconscionabilityare considered, in a
given case, as parallel analyses, concerned with, and considering differ-
36 In Re Elsie Jones (supra note 35 at paras 112-20), the court also concluded that the re-
lationship between Ms. Jones and Maureen raised the presumption of undue influence,
which had not been rebutted. (No separate analysis was provided.) See also Riley v Ri-
ley, 2010 BCSC 161 at paras 65-74, 55 ETR (3d) 226; Modonese, supra note 35 at paras
96-129; Kapacila v Otto, 2007 SKCA 140 at para 11, 302 Sask R 226; Cadieux v Collin-
Evanoff (1988), 14 QAC 18 at 23 (available on CanLII) (Qc CA); Archer v St John et al,
2008 ABQB 9 at paras 69-77, 439 AR 260; O’Neil v Wallace O’Neil (Succession de), 2010
QCCS 2768 at paras 48-59 (available on CanLII); Dunn (Trustee of) v Kiernan, 2011
ABPC 203 at para 18 (available on CanLII).
37 See Margaret Hall, Equity and the Older Adult: The Doctrines of Undue Influence and
Unconscionability in Ann Soden, ed, Advising the Older Client (Markham, Ont: Lex-
isNexis Butterworths, 2005) 329 at 329-31.
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
77
ent, factual aspects of the case: the relational or contextual aspects going
to undue influence or unconscionability, and the objective or cognitive as-
pects going to capacity. As discussed and set out in the cases, however,
these analyses are less distinct on either a textual or a rhetorical level,
with the courts conclusions on each point coming instead at the end of a
holistic account of the transaction and the context in which it took place.38
Evidence of cognitive ability39 is embedded in what is essentially a life sto-
ry, as that story surrounds and gives meaning to the disputed transaction.
B. Health Treatment
Capacity assessment in the health care decision-making context40 is,
in contrast, almost completely controlled by health professionals in a clin-
38 See e.g. Re Elsie Jones, supra note 35; Lowery v Falconer, 2008 BCSC 516, 39 ETR (3d)
188.
39 Including, in the case of wills and will-like property dispositions, a consideration of any
insane delusionsthe belief in things impossible; the belief in things possible, but so
improbable, under the surrounding circumstances, that no man of sound mind would
give them credit; to which we may add, the carrying to an insane extent impressions not
in their nature irrational (Prinsep v Dyce Sombre (1856), 10 Moo PC 232 at 247, 14 ER
480)often expressed as some variation on my children are plotting against me.
40 British Columbias Health Care (Consent) and Care Facility (Admission) Act (RSBC
1996, c 181 (Supp), s 7) requires the person to demonstrate that he or she understands
the information provided by the heath care provider and understands that the infor-
mation pertains to him or her. Ontarios Health Care Consent Act, 1996 (s 4(1), being
Schedule A of An Act to repeal the Advocacy Act, 1992, revise the Consent to Treatment
Act, 1992, amend the Substitute Decisions Act, 1992 and amend other Acts in respect of
related matters, SO 1996, c 2) provides that [a] person is capable with respect to a
treatment, admission to a care facility or a personal assistance service if the person is
able to understand the information that is relevant to making a decision about the
treatment, admission or personal assistance service, as the case may be, and able to ap-
preciate the reasonably foreseeable consequences of a decision or lack of decision. Al-
bertas Adult Guardianship and Trusteeship Act (SA 2008, c A.4-2, s 1(d) [Alberta Adult
Guardianship Act]) defines capacity as:
in respect of the making of a decision about a matter, the ability to under-
stand the information that is relevant to the decision and to appreciate the
reasonably foreseeable consequences of
(i) a decision, and
(ii) a failure to make a decision.
See Saskatchewans The Health Care Directives and Substitute Health Care Decision
Makers Act, SS 1997, c H-0.001, s 2(1)(b) [Saskatchewan Health Care Directives Act]:
[C]apacity means the ability:
(i) to understand information relevant to a health care decision respecting a
proposed treatment;
(ii) to appreciate the reasonably foreseeable consequences of making or not
making a health care decision respecting a proposed treatment; and
(iii) to communicate a health care decision on a proposed treatment.
78 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
ical setting, as opposed to the kind of legally controlled processes of histor-
ical recreation described above. The consequence of a finding of incapaci-
ty, in the health care context, will be the identification or appointment of
a substitute decision maker, or if the applicable legislation allows, the fol-
lowing of the persons past wishes as set out in an advance directive.41
The finding of capacity may subsequently be challenged, but retrospective
legal review will be very much the exception to the rule. Even where that
finding is challenged, its basisthe medical assessment of capacity to
consent to treatmentensures a continuing level of medical evidentiary
control that will be missing in the property cases. If treatment has (or has
not) taken place, no retrospective evaluation can set aside that action and
rearrange the outcome accordingly, unlike in the property cases discussed
above. The remedy, if any, will be damages.42
Medical actors are not mere passive enactors of the legal framework,
and distinctly medical values and ideologies will inform how the legal
framework is applied. Traditional protectionist or paternalist medical
principles, with no direct analog in law, have historically worked to pre-
sent the central issue in health care decision making as a tension between
the paternalistic best interests proclivities of medical professionals and
the legally protected autonomy rights of patients. From the late 1960s
onward, however, patient autonomy has been recognized within the bio-
ethics discourse and, on the formal level, within medical decision-making
practice, as the pre-eminent value.43 This recognition more closely aligns
medical norms with legal norms, with capacity conceptualized as enforc-
ing the true or genuine (and therefore autonomous) choices of individuals
through the non-recognition of false (i.e., incapable) instruction.44
41 Personal Directives Act, RSA 2000, c P-6, Part 2; Saskatchewan Health Care Directives
Act, supra note 40, Part II; The Health Care Directives Act, SM 1992, c 33, CCSM c H27,
ss 4-11; Consent to Treatment and Health Care Directives Act, SPEI 1996, c 10, Part III;
Advance Health Care Directives Act, SN 1995, c A-4.1, Part I; Personal Directives Act,
SNWT 2005, c 16, ss 4-10; Adult Guardianship and Planning Statutes Amendment Act,
2007, SBC 2007, c 34, s 29.
42 The financial outcomes at stake in retrospective property-related capacity evaluations,
in contrast, create more incentive for disappointed third parties to engage the legal pro-
cess.
43 See David J Rothman, Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics
Transformed Medical Decision Making (np: Basic Books, 1991) at 1-3. See also Wolpe,
supra note 13.
44 Despite this formal account, however, it has been suggested that the enthusiastic ap-
plication of the [mental] capacity requirement is used, in practice, as a mechanism for
moderating the consequences of an absolute right to refuse medical treatment: Mary
Donnelly, Healthcare Decision-Making: Autonomy, Capacity and the Limits of Liberal-
ism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010) at 71. In this counter-story,
traditional protectionist medical values are given force through the mechanism of ca-
pacity assessment, which can be activated and used to exclude otherwise autonomous
C. Guardianship and Guardianship-Type Interventions45
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
79
Guardianship is a legal process with legal consequences (appointing a
substitute decision maker empowered to make legally recognized deci-
sions on behalf of another. Unlike a medical diagnosis, treatment is not
the (formal) outcome of a finding of incapacity in this context.46 Generally
speaking, guardians may be appointed through two processes: by court
appointment or through a process of statutory guardianship, on the ba-
sis of a certificate of incapacity issued by a medical professional, as speci-
fied in the legislation.47
decisions on the grounds that the decision maker is not capable of making the decision
in question.
45 The term guardianship and guardianship-type interventions here refers to a legally
authorized inquiry into an individuals mental capacity for the purpose of appointing a
substitute or co-decision maker, who is authorized to make decisions and to carry out
and organize day-to-day activities on behalf of that individual. (The model of co-decision
making positions that appointee as helping the individual with these tasks.) Guardi-
anship and guardianship-type interventions also include the legally authorized, invol-
untary admittance of an individual to a care facility or nursing home, which also entails
a projected, continuing, and legally authorized control of individual, day-to-day activi-
ties.
46 See e.g. Patients Property Act, RSBC 1996, c 349 [BC Patients Property Act]; Infirm Per-
sons Act, RSNB 1973, c I-8; Incompetent Persons Act, RSNS 1989, c 218; Mentally Disa-
bled Persons’ Estates Act, RSN 1990, c M-10; Alberta Adult Guardianship Act, supra
note 40; Substitute Decisions Act, 1992, SO 1992, c 30 [Ontario Substitute Decisions
Act]; Adult Protection Act, RSPEI 1988, c A-5 [PEI Adult Protection Act]; Adult Protec-
tion and Decision Making Act, being Schedule A to the Decision Making, Support and
Protection to Adults Act, SY 2003, c 21 [Yukon Adult Protection Act]; Guardianship and
Trusteeship Act, SNWT 1994, c 29 [Northwest Territories Guardianship Act]; The Adult
Guardianship and Co-decision-making Act, SS 2000, c A-5.3 [Saskatchewan Adult
Guardianship Act].
47 In the latter case, guardianship may be limited. In British Columbia, statutory guardi-
anship is limited to property guardianship by the Public Guardian and Trustee (the
process is laconically set out in the BC Patients Property Act (supra note 46, s 1(a)). See
also Guidelines for Incapability Assessments, supra note 29). Statutory guardianship
has been controversial because it allows for this crucial capacity determination, with its
dramatic social consequenceswhich can be said to demarcate the public from the pri-
vate sphere in the individual contextto be made without court control, usurping the
traditional role of the courts as the guarantors of personal rights. For this reason, re-
forms to adult guardianship law in British Columbia, for example, originally contained
no provision for statutory guardianship. The usefulness of statutory guardianship has
ultimately led to its retention, however, in the adult guardianship legislative reforms
that have taken place in Canada over the last two decades. Statutory guardianship may
be helpful where there is no private individual ready, willing, and able to initiate and
take on a guardianship application; the process itself is considerably swifter and less
costly (important factors given the public nature of the process). The limitation to the
Public Guardian and Trustee is intended to balance the risk to individual rights that
would otherwise be entailed by the absence of a court process.
80 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
Despite this overtly legal character, however, the guardianship pro-
cess is highly medicalized. Even in the context of court-appointed guardi-
anships, medical capacity assessment will be required and will almost al-
ways be controlling, in dramatic contrast to the wide discussion of evi-
dence found in the (retrospective) property transaction cases. In property
cases, relevant medical evidence may well be missing or cobbled together
from non-capacity-specific medical encounters (visits to the family doctor,
for example).48 In contrast, guardianship applications will be preceded by
a specific capacity assessment that is undertaken for that purpose, and
that assessment will virtually always control the outcome of the case. Le-
gal disagreement with the medical assessment is rare and, when it occurs,
is almost always the result of particular factual situations where compet-
ing medical assessments are put before the court, laying bare the con-
structed (as opposed to natural or out-there) character of the capacity
assessment and, indeed, the dementia diagnosis that frequently underlies
it. The case of British Columbia (Public Trustee) v. Batiuk49 provides a ra-
re example. In that case, which involved a hotly contested application
brought by the Public Guardian and Trustee that would have had the ul-
timate effect of removing pair of caregivers from the home of a wealthy
widow, the following medical diagnoses and findings on capacity were be-
fore the court:
That Mrs. Batiuk (Mrs. B) was incapable of managing her affairs
as a result of mental infirmity due to chronic paranoid schizo-
phrenia, cerebral atrophy and organic brain syndrome particularly
evidenced by cognitive impairment including impaired orientation,
attention, memory and language;
That Mrs. B was competent to make personal decisions but inca-
pable of giving a power of attorney (and that further assessment
was required);
That Mrs. B was probably incapable of managing her affairs by
reason of mental infirmity due to chronic schizophrenia and cere-
brovascular disease, and probably incapable of managing her per-
son;
That Mrs. B was capable of managing her affairs … [with] no in-
dication of chronic paranoid schizophrenia, that the caregivers
discontinuance of antipsychotic medication with no adverse effects
to Mrs. B cast serious doubt on the diagnosis of schizophrenia,
48 See Glyn Davies & Lesley Taylor, Private Committeeship in British Columbia: A
Study of Due Process (1989) 8:1 Can J Fam L 185 at 196-98. If challenged, the basis
will almost always be a conflict between competing would-be guardians, as opposed to
relating to the determination of capacity itself.
49 (1996), 7 CPC (4th) 343, 15 ETR (2d) 60 (BC Sup Ct) [Batiuk cited to CPC].
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
81
and that Mrs. B showed improvement in cognitive function as an
outcome of the discontinuance of this medication;
No evidence of chronic schizophrenia, and that, despite evidence of
organic brain damage from a stroke, Mrs. B was capable of giving
a power of attorney;
That Mrs. B knows what she wants and is competent in com-
municating her wishes and needs to others and knows what she is
doing, and was quite competent to grant her caregivers power of
attorney;
That Mrs. B was as rational and competent as the average person,
despite speech difficulties, and was in no way obtunded either by
medication or a pathological condition.50
The court concluded that Mrs. Batiuk was mentally capable.
Competing medical assessments, in this context, work to pull back the
curtain of objective biological fact, revealing the human work of construc-
tion that is alwaysalthough usually hiddencarried out behind it. In
the more usual course of events, however, that curtain stays closed. Once
the medical assessment comes into being, whether on the basis of mere
diagnosis (as set out in old-fashioned, status-based legislation, such as the
Patients Property Act) or through a modern best practice functional as-
sessment51 carried out by an interdisciplinary health team, that assess-
ment assumes the mystifying authority of the bio-fact from the perspec-
tive, and for the purposes, of the law. (Although the machinations behind
the curtain will always remain visible to the medical observer.) This med-
ical control has been criticized by authors, who describe it as an abdica-
tion of due process for older adults,52 but in fact, it is the inevitable out-
come of the determinative role assigned to cognitive capacity, in this con-
text, as a scientific matter on which physicians are the designated ex-
perts.
If current and projected courses of behaviour are in question
financial decision making now and in the future, as opposed to a discrete,
past transactionthe consequence of a finding of mental incapacity will
be the appointment of a long-term substitute decision maker, or guardian.
(Long-term need not mean forever, but connotes a period beyond an iden-
50 Ibid at paras 42, 45-46, 48, 52-53, 56.
51 See e.g. Capacity Assessment, O Reg 460/05, s 3. Prescribed guidelines for assessing ca-
pacity can be accessed at Capacity Assessment Office, Guidelines for Conducting As-
sessments of Capacity (2005), online: Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General
52 Davies & Taylor, supra note 48 at 198-200.
82 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
tified, discrete, and pending decision.)53 Unlike pending, discrete health
care decisions, and past, retrospectively assessed property-related deci-
sions, the precise nature of all decisions that a guardian might possibly
make on behalf of another person is unknowable at the time that this per-
sons capacity is assessed. The abstraction of capacity in this context sets
it apart from the (relatively embodied) inquiries in the other contexts con-
sidered here. Despite the efforts of modern guardianship legislation to
more closely resemble the health care decision-making paradigm, limiting
capacity evaluation and guardianship powers to more specific kinds of
choices,54 anticipating or allowing explicitly for temporal limits,55 and
providing for shared or co-decision making,56 the very idea of guardian-
ship is necessarily predicated on the recognized need, in some circum-
stances, for stable, ongoing, formalized, and therefore publicly reviewable,
relationships of responsibility. In these circumstances, a requirement of a
decision-specific capacity assessment preceding each decision would be
ludicrously cumbersome and unworkable. Modern guardianship legisla-
tion therefore, as it must in order to effect its essential purpose, retains at
its core the evaluation of a persons current and projected ability to make
certain of decisions. These classes of decision are given a finer breakdown
in modern legislation but cannot be limited to discrete decisions in a spe-
cific and known context.
As embodied, moreover, those decisions at the centre of the guardian-
ship inquiry are qualitatively different from the discrete and punctate de-
cisions at issue in the property or health care contexts57whether to
53 See Margaret Isabel Hall, Capacity, Vulnerability, Risk and Consent: Personhood in
the Law in Deborah OConnor & Barbara Purves, eds, Decision-Making, Personhood
and Dementia: Exploring the Interface (London, UK: Jessica Kingsley, 2009) 119 at 123-
24 [Hall, Capacity, Vulnerability, Risk and Consent].
54 See e.g. Alberta Adult Guardianship Act, supra note 40, ss 33(1)-(2); Ontario Substitute
Decisions Act, supra note 46, ss 59-60; PEI Adult Protection Act, supra note 46, ss 8, 16;
Yukon Adult Protection Act, supra note 46, s 38; Northwest Territories Guardianship
Act, supra note 46, s 11; Saskatchewan Adult Guardianship Act, supra note 46, s 15.
55 See e.g. Alberta Adult Guardianship Act, supra note 40, s 33(8); Ontario Substitute De-
cisions Act, supra note 46, s 63; PEI Adult Protection Act, supra note 46, s 26; Yukon
Adult Protection Act, supra note 46, s 37(2)(a); Northwest Territories Guardianship Act,
supra note 46, s 9; Saskatchewan Adult Guardianship Act, supra note 46, s 14(4).
56 See e.g. Saskatchewan Adult Guardianship Act, supra note 46, s 14(1)(a); Yukon Adult
Protection Act, supra note 46, Part 1; Alberta Adult Guardianship Act, supra note 40, s
13(1). The Ontario Substitute Decisions Act (supra note 46, s 66) and the Northwest Ter-
ritories Guardianship Act (supra note 46, s 12) require the guardian to consult with the
individual and to enable his or her participation in decision making to the fullest possi-
ble extent, although they do not explicitly provide for co-decision making.
57 See Rebecca Kuklas analysis and criticism of the punctate decision as the (formally
recognized) key event in health care decision making and the building block of auton-
omy: Conscientious Autonomy: Displacing Decisions in Health Care (2005) 35:2 The
Hastings Center Report 34.
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
83
make a will or whether to have an operationreferring, rather, to ones
ongoing performance of lifes essential tasks.58 The distinction is im-
portant. The decision-making model plays a crucial role within the capaci-
ty-autonomy equation or paradigm: if the individual is capable of making
the kind of decision in question, then the content of that decision is (again,
formally) not relevant. The locus of the capacity analysis in the decision
process avoids the substantive evaluation of choices and behaviours. At
the same time, the construct of mental capacity, and therefore the mech-
anism of the decision at its conceptual core, is most ideologically charged
in this context. This is due to the paradigmatically inherent, depersonaliz-
ing effects of a finding of projected incapacity (where persons are defined
as beings capable of rational thought, as opposed to the class of being re-
ferred to by Frankfurt as wantonsa non-person category that includes,
for Frankfurt as for Feinberg, the senile).59
IV. After Capacity: Theorizing Vulnerability
The capacity construct works well enough in the property-decision and
health treatment context, as a mechanism for determining the right
outcomes in situations of conflict or doubt. The capacity construct in the
context of guardianship and guardianship-type interventions is, by con-
trast, much more problematiceven, I suggest, dysfunctional. It is a
source of difficulty and confusion for the professionals charged with find-
ing capacity, together with a consequential depersonalization of those
found to be incapable.
These difficulties have driven both the reforms in modern guardian-
ship legislation and the proliferation of capacity assessment tools over the
last fifteen to twenty years. Legislation in modern guardianship jurisdic-
tions may explicitly require, and provide guidelines for, functional capaci-
ty assessment.60 Even in jurisdictions, such as British Columbia, where
the traditional legislative approach persists (defining capacity in terms of
disability or infirmity), the functional approach to assessment may be
adopted as best practice.61 Despite these developments, however, the men-
tal capacity construct remains intact: whether capacity is defined as a
cognitive-status diagnosis or as decisional ability, the formal focus of the
functional assessment inquiry remains fixed on the individuals internal
mental and rational ability, now evaluated in relation to the specific func-
tion, or functions, in question. The crucial question is posed in the Ontario
58 See also Robert Chia, The Concept of Decision: A Deconstructive Analysis (1994) 31:6
Journal of Management Studies 781.
59 See Frankfurt, supra note 10 at 11.
60 See Capacity Assessment, supra note 51, s 3; Capacity Assessment Office, supra note 51.
61 See Court and Statutory Guardianship, supra note 29 at 14-16.
84 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
guidelines as, Does this persons level of decisional ability match the de-
mands of the specific situation with which they are faced?62 Context and
performance, in this account, are relevant as evidence of that essential
cognitive-decisional ability. The cognitive ability to make a decisionand
the choice of the person who has the cognitive-decisional ability to de-
cide, but who is, on an embodied level, being exploited or living in squal-
or, for examplecannot be interfered with or displaced. This non-
interference respects the capable persons right to make objectively bad
or foolish decisions. In this way, functional capacity, and the functional
capacity assessment, can be seen as a finer-grained iteration of the auton-
omy or mental capacity threshold, presented in the objective-authoritative
hard-science language of standardized measures and scores (with the
rapidly expanding repertoire of standardized functional and cognitive as-
sessment tools supplementing the once-sufficient diagnosis and progno-
sis), and supported by the soft evidence provided by interviews and col-
lateral information.
From another perspective, however, the medical shift towards func-
tional assessment, by explicitly seeing and asking about performance (i.e.,
behaviour) and context, albeit in the guise of a more complete and scien-
tific measure of capacity, may be seen as implicitly acknowledging the
essential function of guardianship as a social response to vulnerability.
The question Does this persons level of decisional ability match the de-
mands of the specific situation with which they are faced? can be under-
stood as asking, in effect, How is this person coping on a day-to-day level
without assistance? If functional capacity and the functional capacity as-
sessment effect a regularization of the capacity inquiry as a de facto (but
insistently not de jure) assessment of vulnerability, how much does the
continuing language of capacity really matter? Or can it be considered, as
in the property context, as a useful, no-cost, theoretical mechanism for
reconciling social policy objectives with core, but essentially abstract, val-
ues of liberal individualism?
To the extent that capacity and vulnerability exist in theoretical oppo-
sition to one anothernot as mere words, but as each is informed by the
discourse that has developed around and between themthe continuing
language of capacity matters a great deal. Vulnerability is necessarily po-
sitioned within the capacity-autonomy paradigm as a kind of incapacity
lite63 that would justify interference without the (apparent) scientific-
62 Capacity Assessment Office, supra note 51, II.1. Questions related to context may be
characterized in terms of needs and supports (e.g.: What does the person need in order
to function adequately, avoiding a guardianship order? Are the required supports avail-
able in the community?).
63 See Margaret Isabel Hall, Material Exploitation and the Autonomy Ideal: The Role of
Equity Theory in Adult Protection Legislation, online: (2008) 5 Elder Law Review 9,
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
85
objective legitimacy of the capacity finding. The traditional association of
vulnerability with weakness, victimhood, deprivation, dependency, or pa-
thology64 may be understood as, at least in part, a function of this rela-
tionship to the dominant paradigm and the capacity-autonomy threshold:
you can make your own decisions, therefore the decisions you make are
your own; where they are sufficiently bad to attract outside intervention,
you have willfully taken yourself outside the pale of reasonable self-
governance. You have become a failed state, the faulty subject non pareil.
Rejection of this characterization has led to a rejection of vulnerability it-
self, as both patronizing and harmful, derived from stereotypes and the
kind of substantive value judgments that negate individual autonomy.
This counter-narrative, also, is a function of the capacity-autonomy para-
digm; the persistence of the capacity construct in the guardianship con-
text has frustrated a coherent, theoretical development of vulnerability.
Instead, vulnerability exists in the shadow of, and is defined by, its rela-
tionship to capacity: the other where capacity is the norm; a protectionist-
based, as opposed to autonomy-based, ground for intervention; subjective
where capacity is objective; sentimental and sloppy where capacity is
clear-eyed and scientific.65
Despite the theoretical and ideological hegemony of capacity, it is em-
bodied vulnerability, as opposed to abstract capacity, that most often
serves as the de facto locus of evaluation and response for the courts, law-
yers, and the health professionals who play the dominant role in the ca-
pacity-finding process.66 Within the conceptual framework of the capacity-
autonomy equation, however, that evaluation is, and must be, covert
occurring outside of the official margins, unexamined, undefined, and
therefore undefended. The evaluation of individual vulnerability in the
capacity assessment process, where it is acknowledged to have taken
Part V
tion].
64 Martha Albertson Fineman, The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Hu-
man Condition (2008) 20:1 Yale JL & Feminism at 8 [Fineman, The Vulnerable Sub-
ject]. In Equity Theory, I suggest that this discourse, and the stigma it engenders,
may have the effect of increasing the social vulnerability of individual members of
groups identified as vulnerable within it, such as older adults (MI Hall, Equity Theo-
ry: Responding to the Material Exploitation of the Vulnerable but Capable in Israel
Doron, ed, Theories on Law and Aging: The Jurisprudence of Elder Law (Berlin:
Springer, 2009) 107 at 108 [Hall, Equity Theory]).
65 Perhaps corresponding to social constructs of femininity on the one hand, masculinity
on the other.
66 For an interesting discussion of the tension between the legal requirement to find (ab-
stractly defined) capacity and the embodied realities of social work practice with older
adults, see Louise Holland, Abandonment or Autonomy: How Do Social Workers Know
the Difference? (MSW Thesis, University of Northern British Columbia, 2010) [un-
published].
86 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
place, will be identified as a deviant and faulty, paternalistic and protec-
tionist practice. The charged, covert, and unspeakable centrality of vul-
nerability in this context has given rise to the apparent conflict or debate
between protection and autonomy that has dominated and distorted the
discourse around guardianship for decades. The language of debate is, of
course, a rhetorical mechanism: in this discourse, protection is the rhe-
torical straw man in opposition to which autonomy is, heroically, de-
fined.
A. Situating Vulnerability: Relational Autonomy
The idea of autonomy as an internalized mental quality associated
with self-possession and free will that sits at the core of the capacity-
autonomy paradigm and ideology, is embodied, in mainstream liberal cul-
ture, in the crude figure of the autonomous man.67 That figure has long
played a dominant role in legal doctrine and legal discourse generally, and
in the law pertaining to mental capacity in particular. (He is also now en-
shrined as the dominant principle in bioethics, overshadowing the tradi-
tional medical value of beneficence.) Elsewhere, however, the theoretical
coherence and credibility of the autonomous man, and of the world view
he embodies, has been seriously eroded. Jennifer Nedelsky and other,
primarily feminist, writers have reimagined autonomy as fundamentally
relational, contextual, and developed (as opposed to innate, to be held on-
to, lost, or taken), exercised through (and not in resistance to) relation-
ships with other human beings, both as a process of autonomous thought
or decision making, and as a set of substantive characteristics.68 For
67 The hyperbolized figure is described by Lorraine Code as:
[S]elf-sufficient, independent, and self-reliant, a self-realizing individual who
directs his efforts toward maximizing his personal gains. His independence is
under constant threat from other (equally self-serving) individuals: hence he
devises rules to protect himself from intrusion. Talk of rights, rational self-
interest, expediency, and efficiency permeates his moral, social, and political
discourse (What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of
Knowledge (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991) at 77-78).
68 Jennifer Nedelsky, Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources, Thoughts and Possibilities
(1989) 1:1 Yale JL & Feminism 7 at 10 [Nedelsky, Reconceiving Autonomy]; Catriona
Mackenzie & Natalie Stoljar, Introduction: Autonomy Reconfigured in Mackenzie &
Stoljar, supra note 11, 3 at 4. Christman has defined relational autonomy as the label
that has been given to the conception of what it means to be a free, self-governing agent
who is also socially constituted and who possibly defines her basic value commitments
in terms of interpersonal relations and mutual dependencies (John Christman, The
Politics of Persons: Individual Autonomy and Socio-historical Selves (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2009) at 164-65). Embedding autonomy in a relationship
context recognizes the reality of many womens lives, for whom relationships and their
maintenance are often essential to self-identity and decision making, and at least po-
tentially, brings those lives within the ambit of autonomy and the autonomous. Inclu-
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
87
Nedelsky, autonomy is practiced as a way of being in the world rather
than a series of self-willed choices. We act as we are constituted to act and
as our meaning, of which our social and relationship context is at least
partially constitutive, inclines us to act.69
Relationships per se are not sufficient for the development of autono-
my in the relational account. The right kind of relationship context, of
which the loving mother-child relationship may be the paradigm, but the
hostile mother-child relationship is surely the antithesis, is required. In
this way, and for this reason, theories of relational autonomy70 necessarily
involve questions of values and, therefore, value judgment. Some of us
will be lucky enough to have developed within a relationship context con-
ducive to the development of relational autonomy. Those of us who were
not so lucky must subsequently find or create that context. Our material
and personal situation will be crucial, probably determinative, to our suc-
cess in this endeavour: Do we have access to sufficient money, time, and
environmental supports? Are we fearful, exploited, or abused? Do we have
personal characteristics that make it more difficult to navigate the social
world? Many, accordingly, will be left out of the autonomy ambit, at least
until such time as they are able to develop, or regain, true autonomy.
This apparent eliteness of relational autonomy, as a highly desirable
quality possessed by the few, is less problematic if relational autonomy is
understood to exist in relation to vulnerability rather than in opposition to
capacity and, therefore, non-autonomy and non-personhood. Vulnerabil-
itylike relational autonomy, as it is described by Nedelsky and others
arises through the interaction of personal characteristics (also shaped by
context) and through those contextually derived factors that together
make up the individuals total life situation, including education, relation-
ships, experiences, and material circumstances and resulting opportuni-
ties, as well as connection to other people and other worlds through paid
sion among those who are recognized as autonomous is significant given the high social
value of autonomy and, indeed, the historical and theoretical equation of autonomy
with personhood itself.
69 [T]here are no human beings in the absence of relations with others. We take our being
in part from those relations (Nedelsky, Reconceiving Autonomy, supra note 68 at 9).
Recognition of relationships as constitutive avoids the conflation of a womans identity
with relationship-oriented roles that are assigned and defined by others (e.g., wife,
mother, grandmother, daughter). These roles obscure womens individual identities in a
way that effectively constructs a hyperbolic, stereotypical companion for the atomistic
autonomous man, equally unrealistic and crude yet also equally culturally entrenched,
and therefore, at least potentially constitutive in its own right.
70 Like accounts of autonomy as a substantive conditionas opposed to a value-neutral,
free, and rational processgenerally: see Stoljar, supra note 11; Benson, supra note 11;
Kristinsson, supra note 11; Marina AL Oshana, Personal Autonomy and Society
(1998) 29:1 Jour Soc Phil 81.
88 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
work or otherwise.71 In this way, vulnerability is not so much the absence
of (relational) autonomy but its constant shadow, which may be expected
to wax and wane over an individuals life course.72 And like relational au-
tonomy, vulnerability is practiced as a way of being in the world that is
neither chosen nor willed; as persons, whether vulnerable or not, we act
as our meaning inclines us to act, and we take that meaning, in part, from
our relationship context.73
B. Vulnerability and Public Response: The Problem of Definition
The mental capacity construct provides, from the legal perspective, a
hard, objective standard. No similar construction of vulnerability as an
out-there bio-fact is possible. Vulnerability is necessarily relational, and
legislation in jurisdictions recognizing, and providing a response to, vul-
nerability has struggled with the question of definition. Where the vul-
nerable are defined in terms of status characteristicsthe elderly, the
physically and mentally disabledobvious problems of inappropriate
overinclusiveness (together with less obvious, and more controversial,
problems of underinclusiveness) arise,74 reawaken[ing], indeed, the
ghost of a status approach that was intended to have been banished by
functional capacity assessment.75 This is vulnerability as incapacity-lite.
The development of a common law vulnerability in the English courts
suggests a more distinctive legal construct and one that is more akin to
71 In this way, the idea of vulnerability parallels undue influence and unconscionability
the doctrines of equitable fraudwhich may be understood as explanations or theories
of different aspects of the underlying concept: see Hall, Equity Theory, supra note 64
at 108-109.
72 An idea consistent with Martha Finemans vulnerability thesis, in which vulnerability
describes a universal, inevitable, enduring aspect of the human condition that must be
at the heart of our concept of social and state responsibility (The Vulnerable Subject,
supra note 64 at 8).
73 C.f. Deborah OConnor, Margaret Isabel Hall & Martha Donnelly, Assessing Capacity
Within a Context of Abuse or Neglect (2009) 21:2 Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect
156 at 164-65. Some proponents of a contextual approach to capacity assessment have
emphasized its potential to extend the meaning and ambit of capacity, thereby making
a finding of incapacity, with its attendant loss of autonomy, less likely: OConnor, Rela-
tional Framework, supra note 21 at 23. The outcome of contextual or relational capaci-
ty, within the capacity-autonomy paradigm, must be non-intervention, in more (possi-
bly most) cases. Is that the ideal? I suggest that it is not and that the expansion of ca-
pacity in this way will abandon more women like Dorothy (see infra note 90) to their
autonomy.
74 See e.g. Minn Stat 626.5572(21) (2001). See also Manitobas The Vulnerable Persons
Living With a Mental Disability Act, SM 1993, c 29, CCSM c V90, s 1(1) vulnerable
person.
75 Michael C Dunn, Isabel CH Clare & Anthony J Holland, To Empower or to Protect?
Constructing the Vulnerable Adult in English Law and Public Policy (2008) 28:2 LS
234 at 244.
the equitable doctrines of undue influence and unconscionability. In Re
SA, Justice Munby described the developing76 standard as follows:
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
89
In the context of the inherent jurisdiction I would treat as a vulner-
able adult someone who, whether or not mentally incapacitated, and
whether or not suffering from any mental illness or mental disorder,
is or may be unable to take care of him or herself, or unable to pro-
tect him or herself against significant harm or exploitation, or who is
deaf, blind or dumb, or who is substantially handicapped by illness,
injury or congenital deformity. This, I emphasise, is not and is not
intended to be a definition. It is descriptive, not definitive; indicative
rather than prescriptive.77
Discussing Re SA and the development of the courts inherent jurisdic-
tions with respect to the vulnerable, Dunn et al. notewith cautionthe
implications of the courts analysis in that case: that the courts inherent
jurisdiction is not confined to vulnerable adults defined through inherent
vulnerability:
[T]he incorporation of situational vulnerability into the construction
of the vulnerable adult draws upon an understanding of vulnerabil-
ity as universal. Vulnerability becomes a concept tied to the person-
al, social, economic and cultural circumstances within which indi-
viduals find themselves at different points of their lives, and an en-
demic feature of humanity. Accordingly, justifying substitute deci-
sion-making on the basis of situational vulnerability could lead to in-
terventions that are potentially infinite in scope and application.
Might it not be possible, for example, that a man, involved in an
abusive relationship and about to embark on cohabitation with his
violent partner, could be defined as being situationally vulnerable in
order to justify court interventions that place restrictions on his liv-
ing arrangements, as a means of ensuring that he is able to make
personal autonomous decisions in the future, without the imposition
of constraint or the threat of violence? Equally, might it not be possi-
ble that a family with considerable financial debt could be defined as
situationally vulnerable in order to justify court interventions which
ensure that they restructure their debts in a manner that could ul-
timately relieve this putative vulnerability, thus ensuring that they
can continue to make personal economic decisions that are free from
the undue influence of bank charges or the threat of bankruptcy?78
This is the fear of the slippery slope of open-ended intervention. But is the
complexity of social reality and the nature of the self in the context of hu-
man relationships really beyond the reach of coherent legal analysis and
response? Consider Lord Scarmans description of the doctrine of undue
76 Developing as an exercise of the courts inherent jurisdiction.
77 [2005] EWHC 2942 (Fam) 82 (available on QL) [emphasis added]. See also Re G,
[2004] EWHC 2222 (Fam) (available on QL); Re SK, [2004] EWHC 3202 (Fam), [2005] 3
All ER 421; A Local Authority v DL, [2011] EWHC 1022 (Fam) (available on QL).
78 Dunn, Clare & Holland, supra note 75 at 241.
90 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
influence, also concerned with the self in a social and relationship context,
in the case of National Westminster Bank PLC v. Morgan:
There is no precisely defined law setting limits to the equitable ju-
risdiction of a court to relieve against undue influence. … It is the
unimpeachability at law of a disadvantageous transaction which is
the starting-point from which the court advances to consider wheth-
er the transaction is the product merely of one’s own folly or of the
undue influence exercised by another. … [T]his is a question which
depends upon the particular facts of the case.79
There is no substitute in this branch of the law for a meticulous
examination of the facts.80
I suggest that it is possible to imagine a similarly fine-brushed, indi-
vidualized, and context-sensitive approach outside of the property context
to which undue influence has traditionally been confined. The traditional
doctrines of equityundue influence and unconscionabilityprovide a
useful conceptual framework for seeing, and responding to, vulnerability
in embodied context.81
I am arguing that the key question is not whether society should re-
spond to vulnerability. The guardianship response to mental incapacity
including public guardianship-type interventions for the cognitively im-
paired under mental health legislationis a response to vulnerability,
couched in, and confused by, the language of capacity. I am not arguing
for a necessary extension of legal or social intervention to a new class of
persons, the vulnerable, but for an honest reappraisal of the basis on
whichand therefore, the ways in whichinterventions currently hap-
pen. The vulnerability characterization, unhinged from the capacity-
autonomy paradigm, allows us to see, understand, and therefore question
the situational limitation of this public response to vulnerability as a poli-
cy decision. Recognizing vulnerability does not, by that reason alone,
mean responding to all vulnerability, in all circumstances (the slippery
slope feared by Dunn et al.). Responding to vulnerability depends on the
availability of an effective response, together with a policy decision re-
garding whether vulnerability unchecked, in certain classes of cases, is
permissible. Guardianship legislation, from this perspective, provides a
79 [1985] AC 686 at 709, [1985] 2 WLR 588 HL (Eng).
80 Ibid.
81 A key insight underlying the conceptual framework of undue influence in particular is the
construction of vulnerability not as a constant and organically derived state of being, but
as arising from the interplay between the relationship context and ones personal charac-
teristics in a particular situation: see Hall, Capacity, Vulnerability, Risk and Consent,
supra note 53 at 127; Hall, Equity Theory, supra note 64 at 114; Hall, Material Exploi-
tation, supra note 63; OConnor, Hall & Donnelly, supra note 68 at 165-67; Margaret Hall,
Equitable Fraud: Material Exploitation in Domestic Settings, online: (2006) 4 Elder Law
Review 7
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
91
response to the vulnerability of older adults with cognitive-mental health
deficits,82 allowing for a particular and limited responsesubstitute deci-
sion makingthat efficiently responds to the social needs involved (as
discussed above), if not, with any exactitude, to the needs of the vulnera-
ble subject him- or herself. The guardianship response is not, formally,
limited to older adults but is most often, by a considerable margin, used in
response to the vulnerability of older adults.
Conclusion
As Lord Rodger of Earlsferry reminded us in D v. East Berkshire
Community Health NHS Trust, [T]he world is full of harm for which the
law furnishes no remedy.83 Objectively speaking, there are many people
who struggle; who cannot pay their bills or are exploited; who, for a varie-
ty of reasons, do not care for themselves or their surroundings in accord-
ance with basic norms of hygiene. And many of these people could, per-
haps, be characterized as vulnerable. Is intervention justified on behalf of
them all? We know that it does not happenthat no explanatory mecha-
nism has emerged to enable it to happen. Why not? What is special about
the group of people currently characterized as incapable that, as matter of
(non-explicit) social policy, motivates intervention (which is then squared
with the autonomy ideal through the theoretical mechanism of incapaci-
ty)?
The most obvious characteristic of the incapableas opposed to the
mentally ill, as a constructed classis that they tend to be old.84 Unlike
the young mentally ill, there is an implicit social understanding that the
presence of old, impoverished, and visibly delusional people begging on
the street and sleeping in doorways is not tolerable in the way that the
presence of visibly mentally ill street people has become an everyday
feature of urban life. The public vulnerability of the old is intolerable in a
way that the public vulnerability of the young, excepting children, is not.
There may be compelling reasons for this policy choice and for the public
82 Browne, Blake, Donnelly, and Herbert have suggested a model of encumbrance, distinct
from capacity, as a basis for intervention in the lives of the old, in which interference is
justified only if the person is putting him- or herself at significant risk, if the person is
encumbered (incompetent or subject to some other judgment-distorting condition),
and if interference will be effective and not, in itself, a source of harm, as well as if the
interference does not generate other or greater harm, is as mild as possible, is non-
discriminatory, and is not, except as a last resort, seen as unjustified by the person sub-
ject to the interference: see Browne et al, supra note 30 at 289-90.
83 [2005] UKHL 23 at para 100, [2005] 2 AC 373.
84 For the purposes of this discussion, I will leave aside the developmentally disabled,
whose situation is qualitatively distinct from the incapable elderly and from the men-
tally ill in important ways that are relevant here.
92 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
response on which it is based, given the increased frailty of older adults;
what is important is that the choice, and the reasons for it, be acknowl-
edged.85 The mechanism of guardianship allows highly motivated family
members and friends to respond to, and deal with, that vulnerability
whether that response is desired by the subject or not. (If assistance is de-
sired, formal guardianship proceedings may not be necessary or pursued,
except in cases of suspected exploitation and contested guardianship.)86
Where no person is available to become a guardian, the available public
response will be more limited: financial (and possibly personal) manage-
ment by the Public Guardian and Trustee, or admittance to a nursing
home.
This analysis is not intended to suggest that cognitive impairment
(i.e., the dementias) is not real; cognitive impairment is a significant con-
tributing factor to the kind of vulnerability that triggers public response.
But mental illness in the non-elderly is equally real, as is addiction and
the effects that an abusive relationship context have on self and relational
autonomy.87 Neither dementia nor mental illnessunlike cancer, for ex-
amplecan be proven during life through a blood test or a cell on a slide.88
Dementia, like mental illness, is established through observation of a per-
sons speech, actions, and behaviours, and the medical evaluation of those
external signs of the brain within. Despite this etiology, however, the de-
mentia diagnosis is presented in popular culture as scientifically hard in
a way that the mental illness diagnosis is not. The human subject of the
dementia diagnosis, therefore, is perceived as morally blameless in a way
that those diagnosed with mental illness are not, also giving rise to, and
justifying, a particular social response (explained, at least in part, through
the construct of decisional capacity).
Theorizing and then identifying vulnerability allows us to focus explic-
itly, and therefore carefully, on the identification of situations or contexts
in which vulnerability justifies a social response. That is a question of pol-
icy. A second question requires serious and careful thought about what
kind of response will actually be useful and workable to redress the par-
85 Another way of looking at this same factor is to understand the relative fragility of older
adults as going to the more purely sympathetic characterization of the incapable elder-
ly, relative to the younger mentally ill, and on this basis, justifying a particular kind of
social response, as with the similarly sympathetic and physically non-threatening cate-
gory of children.
86 See Kapp, supra note 23 at 414-15.
87 See the case of Dorothy, discussed infra note 90.
88 Although new tests of cerebral spinal fluid are being developed for Alzheimers, together
with imaging tests for vascular dementia.
MENTAL CAPACITY IN THE (CIVIL) LAW
93
ticular and embodied problem identified.89 The law cannot and should not
respond where the available response is inappropriate and ineffective;
this involves very different considerations, which are precluded by the
mental capacity construct. The question of resistance, and the problem of
oppressive socialization and other compelling contextual factors, will be
crucial herenot because of their relationship to an abstract autonomy
but because of their practical implications for response in the particular
context of embodied lives. Intervention is easy if I gratefully accept the
help offered by a benevolent relative or emissary of the state; it is hard if I
refuse (e.g., I dont want to leave or to change my context, be it a squalid
hovel or an abusive relationship). If I understand autonomy as innate,
my decision must be enforced unless I have lost capacity (and having
lost my autonomy, my decision is not my own anyway, and the problem is
resolved). If I understand autonomy as relational and developed through
context, the idea of my autonomous decision in these circumstances loses
authority. I may be unable to choose another way of living and being un-
til my context (and therefore my self) is changed.90 This is a hard truth,
and it raises moral, conceptual, and practical challenges. The capacity
construct has worked to the extent that it has masked that truth, ena-
bling intervention without consent in a limited class of situations, while
maintaining the crucial social fiction of liberal autonomy.
89 The capacity paradigm necessarily characterizes both the problem and the response in
terms of decision making: the problem being a lack of decision-making ability; the solu-
tion being a substitute decision maker. But, unlike in the health care context, the
greatest need may not be for a replacement decision maker but rather for material as-
sistance, which may or may not be provided by a substitute decision maker. A vulnera-
bility analysis focuses the inquiry on this question of need, and its provision. The ap-
pointment of a substitute decision maker may be one aspect of a response to vulnerabil-
ity, but it is unlikely to be the only one.
90 L. R. Bergeron describes the case of Dorothy, whose situation was reported to adult
protective services by an emergency medical team, following her collapse after years of
emotional, sexual, and financial abuse and exploitation by her second husband. Dorothy
had previously been admitted, on several occasions, to the hospital for depression. The
mental health social workers had suspected that something was wrong but had not
reported the case to social services because Dorothy would not admit to any abuse.
Nor would Dorothy agree to a mental health intervention. Two years after the interven-
tion by adult protective services, Dorothy was asked by the author whether she felt that
her right to self-determination superseded the intervention she received. This was her
direct and clear response: How dare you professionals speak of self-determination
when I was obviously suffering? Dorothy explained that she was incapable of speak-
ing out about the abuse because of shame and guilt, feeling that she had brought it on
herself her choice of marriage partner. She explained that her isolation and damaged
self-worth, consequent on the abuse, had greatly impacted her perspective and that
what she needed was immediate distancing from her situation, at least initially, before
she could effectively make her own decisions (L Ren Bergeron, Self-Determination
and Elder Abuse: Do We Know Enough? (2008) 46:3-4 Journal of Gerontological Social
Work 81 at 89).
94 (2012) 58:1 MCGILL LAW JOURNAL ~ REVUE DE DROIT DE MCGILL
Recognizing and responding to vulnerability also requires us to think
carefully, and without the obfuscation provided by the apparent scientific
objectivity of the capacity threshold, about judgment. Perhaps we can un-
derstand the significance of the capacity threshold in particular, and the
institutions of social services generally, in terms of a definitively modern
flight from judgment. In leading us back to judgment, theorizing vulnera-
bility (after capacity and the theoretical hegemony of the capacity thresh-
old) leads us back into the embodied world. Judgment (as opposed to mere
choosing) is neither arbitrary, nor subjective, nor idiosyncratic, but is
deeply enmeshed with the world,91 anticipating a community of judgment
makers who must be convinced of the rightness of my chosen course of ac-
tion. Theorizing vulnerability opens that discussion, hitherto precluded by
the closedbecause it is objectively definitivemental capacity thresh-
old.
91 [R]eflection on the theme of judgment teaches us the limits of theory, for judgment
(whether in ethical or political life) attends to particulars that are beyond the purview
of theory as such (Ronald Beiner & Jennifer Nedelsky, Introduction in Ronald Beiner
& Jennifer Nedelsky, eds, Judgment, Imagination, and Politics: Themes from Kant and
Arendt (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001) vii at viii). Jennifer Nedelsky, Em-
bodied Diversity and the Challenges to Law (1997) 42:1 McGill LJ 91 at 106-109.
