FROM BEST INTERESTS TO BETTER INTERESTS? VALUES, UNWISDOM AND OBJECTIVITY IN MENTAL CAPACITY LAW

Abstract The Mental Capacity Act 2005 governs personal decision-making for adults. It incorporates five overarching principles, including that incapacity may not be inferred merely from a person's unwise decisions and where person lacks capacity must made in her best interests. Through analysis of judicial treatment unwisdom, interests, subjectivity objectivity, considered against parliamentary debates on the Bill philosophical critique ideas (un)wisdom, we argue these principles are problematically irreconcilable. Act's radical under-specificity means, paradoxically, this comes to resolved through abstracted values, rather than centricity herself.