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The prominence of the best interests principle in the Mental Capacity Act 2005 represented an important transition to a more resolutely patient-centred model regarding decision-making for incapable adults (“P”). This paper aims to examine the courts’ consideration of P’s values, wishes and beliefs in the context of medical treatment, reflect on whether this has resulted in a wide interpretation of the best interests standard and consider how this impacts clinical decision makers.

A particular focus will be on case law from the Court of Protection of England and Wales and the Supreme Court of the UK. Cases have been selected for discussion on the basis of the significance of their judgements for the field, the range of issues they illustrate and the extent of commentary and attention they have received in the literature. They are presented as a narrative review and are non-exhaustive.

With respect to values, wishes and beliefs, the best interests standard’s interpretation in the courts has been widely varied. Opposing tensions and thematic conflicts have emerged from this case law and were analysed from the perspective of the clinical decision maker.

This review illustrates the complexity and gravity of decisions of the clinical decision makers and the courts have considered in the context of best interests determinations for incapacitated adults undergoing medical treatment. Subsequent to the first such case before the Supreme Court of the UK, emerging case law trends relating to capacity legislation are considered.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ramifications of developments in surveillance policies and technologies for information sharing cultures in a “public protection routine”.

This conceptual paper uses a mixed theoretical, legal and policy-based approach to inform this exploration of the ramifications of developments in surveillance policies and technologies.

This conceptual paper concludes that developments in surveillance policies and technologies as part of the “public protection routine” will result in a damaging and hasty culture of “share or be damned” unless a more careful approach to new information sharing approaches is developed. Otherwise, an increasing bureaucratisation of risk management through surveillance will lead to a disregard for the fine balance between public protection, procedural rights and privacy.

The originality and value of this conceptual paper is considerable – as some of the case studies discussed are very recent ones, and ones that represent an acceleration of the problems within the “public protection routine” which this paper seeks to unpick.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to effectively end race-conscious admissions practices across the nation, this paper highlights the law’s commitment to whiteness and antiblackness, invites us to mourn and to connect to possibility.

Drawing from the theoretical contributions of Cheryl Harris, Jarvis Givens and Chezare Warren, as well as the wisdom of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion, this paper utilizes CRT composite counterstory methodology to illuminate the antiblack reality of facially “race-neutral” admissions.

By manifesting the impossible situation that SFFA and the Supreme Court’s majority seek to normalize, the composite counterstory illuminates how Justice Jackson’s hypothetical enacts a fugitive pedagogy within a dominant legal system committed to whiteness as property; invites us to mourn, to connect to possibility and to remain committed to freedom as an intergenerational project that is inherently humanizing.

In a sobering moment where we face the end of race-conscious admissions, this paper uniquely grapples with the contradictions of affirmative action as minimally effective while also radically disruptive.

Vulnerable adults have recently gained greater protection. A lot of attention has focused on the effect of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) and the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, but many significant provisions can be found elsewhere. It may be that those provisions, and the possibilities they introduce, are not fully understood by those who could make the best use of them. That would be unfortunate. Where it enjoys powers for adult protection purposes, a public authority might have to explain any failure to use them, particularly where that failure has unfortunate consequences. This paper does not deal directly with the law on adult social care. Nor even, in general terms, does it describe the law relating to the safeguarding of vulnerable adults. It does, however, discuss some of the more significant adult protection provisions and in the process, refers to the No Secrets guidance, which was published in 2000 and remains the chief resource for adult protection work. (Department of Health & Home Office, 2000).

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the common and statutory law governing children's capacity or competence to consent to and to refuse medical treatment is unsatisfactory and to suggest solutions.

Critical legal analysis of the law on assessing minors’ decision-making capacity in relation to legal recognition of their consent to and refusal of medical treatment.

Without legal mechanisms which protect both children and their rights, all children and young people are effectively disabled from exercising age and capacity-related autonomy and participation in decisions affecting their lives. Yet in English law, inconsistencies between legal and clinical measures of decision-making capacity, situations where compulsory medical or mental health treatment is lawful, and tensions between rights and duties associated with human rights, autonomy, best interests and protections for the vulnerable create difficulties for clinicians, lawyers and patients.

As the paper acknowledges in its recommendations, the views of stakeholders are needed to enrich and inform legal reforms in this area.

The paper makes suggestions to amend the law and clinical practice which are original and far reaching. The paper suggests that in order to observe children's rights while protecting them appropriately, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and Deprivations of Liberty Safeguards should be applied to minors. The paper recommends the establishment of Mental Capacity Tribunals, similar in nature and purpose to Mental Health Tribunals, to provide legal safeguards and mechanisms to foster the supported decision-making envisaged in recent United Nations Conventions.

Major changes are taking place in the law for those working in the mental health field. This article looks at the impact of the Mental Capacity Act (2005) (most of which was implemented in October 2007) and the Mental Health Act (2007) (the main provisions of which came into effect in October 2008). Key elements of each of these two acts will be covered. The ‘Bournewood Safeguards’ inserted into the Mental Capacity Act (2005) by the Mental Health Act (2007) will also be described.

While many consider court involvement in immigration matters a given, in liberal nation-states, there is actually a substantial degree of variation. This chapter revisits two “critical junctures” in the early immigration histories of Canada and Germany to show that institutions and policy legacies are not just historical backdrop, but actually shaped the strategies of political actors, subsequent institutional configurations, and policy options for long periods of time, thereby revealing unintended consequences, as well as alternative paths that the involvement of the courts (and other actors) could have taken.

This paper explores the links between the PGO and social services in relation to abuse and to local authority management of the finances of vulnerable people. It also reports a small‐scale study of adult protection co‐ordinators in social services departments, which explored the nature of and contact between the two agencies in the context of adult protection inquiries.