A/Prof. Michael Dunn1
1National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
Biography:
Bio to come
Abstract:
Laws governing health and welfare decisions for adults lacking capacity continue to evolve internationally, and there has been increasing interest recently in providing comparative analyses of regulatory frameworks across different national jurisdictions. Amongst other things, these analyses have revealed how local socio-cultural influences can have a nuanced impact on the formulation and interpretation of key concepts, can shape permissible routes for decision-making and the authority of different decision-makers, and can accord different weight to supported vs. substitute decision-making. Turning explicitly to a direct comparison between an Asian and a European jurisdiction, this presentation continues in this same vein of comparative legal analysis. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 in England and Wales and Singapore’s Mental Capacity Act 2008 appear to be twins on paper – with the latter statute substantially transplanting the provisions contained in the former. However, the two laws, when implemented in the courtroom, have gone on to live entirely different lives. I explore how two broadly identical laws have taken on divergent identities, revealing and analysing normative differences in parliamentary intent concerning at what stage a person’s agency is to be putatively empowered and how the judicial development of central concepts has provided the practical scaffolding to realise these distinctive priorities. I further examine underpinning socio-cultural commitments to offer tentative explanations for these observations and, in so doing, resist binary or essentialist claims about the dominant value commitments that are frequently claimed to shape the orientation of health law in the West vs. the East.