Author Dr Jaime Lindsey from Essex Law School, researched mental capacity law in practice by observing Court of Protection hearings, reviewing court files, and conducting interviews with social workers, mediators and lawyers, in addition to theoretical and doctrinal analysis.
The Court of Protection can make decisions about a person’s mental capacity and make best interests rulings on financial, health, or welfare matters for people who may lack the capacity to make their own decisions.
This can include a range of decisions across a person’s life, including decisions about medical treatment, where to live, whether a person can have a sexual relationship or whether they can manage their finances.
Analysing the court through a procedural justice lens, she concludes that procedural justice is not always secured for the person at the heart of Court of Protection cases, as they often do not participate, their experiential evidence is discounted and the court is not designed with the person at the centre of its practice.
This impacts upon their ability to secure access to justice.
Dr Lindsey’s book, Reimagining the Court of Protection: Access to Justice in Mental Capacity Law, outlines her main findings and goes on to make a case for reimagining the Court of Protection as an institution that better secures access to justice for its subjects, with specific recommendations for reform.
The book has been shortlisted by the Socio-Legal Studies Association for the Hart SLSA prize for early career academics, and the Hart SLSA book prize 2023.
Dr Lindsey said: “I am delighted and honoured to have been shortlisted for two prestigious SLSA prizes for my book, Reimagining the Court of Protection.
This is an area which impacts so many people daily and this book, looking at the realities of mental capacity law in practice drawing on empirical socio-legal research, shines a light on the work of this important jurisdiction.”
The winning book in each category will be announced at the annual SLSA conference in April.
This story was first published on the University of Essex’s news webpages and is reproduced on the ELR Blog with permission and thanks.
Upon the nomination of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Professor Geoff Gilbert has been accorded the title of Sérgio Vieira de Mello Professor of International Human Rights & Humanitarian Law in the Essex Law School & Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex!
Sérgio Vieira de Mello worked most of his life for the UNHCR, retired and was then asked to serve as Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Iraq. He was killed in the Baghdad bombing of 2003. He was Brazilian and the government immediately created Sérgio Vieira de Mello Chairs that were meant to be available across the whole of South and Central America to promote education on and for, research regarding, and solidarity with forcibly displaced persons.
The expansion beyond Brazil did not happen until Goeff took on the role of inaugural Chair of the Secretariat of the Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network and there are now SVdM Chairs in Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Ethiopia, with plans for Mozambique and Thailand. Geoff’s initial plan was for the chairs to be established in low- and middle-income countries that host the vast majority of the 103 million people within UNHCR’s mandate, but UNHCR wants to expand these globally akin to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chairs.
Geoff is the first Sérgio Vieira de Mello Professor in the global North, reflecting his education, research and solidarity regarding forcibly displaced persons for the past thirty (30) years.
Christmas is just around the corner. With all the hustle and bustle of academic life, we all need a little time off to refresh, recover and reflect.
As of this week (Monday 19 Dec. 2022), we’ll be taking a winter break.
We hope that you can look back on another positive year with us. In 2022, we had 70 posts and thousands of visitors from 112 countries around the world.
The ELR Blog will be back in January 2023 with more exciting research news from the Essex Law School.
We wish you and your family all the warmth this holiday season has to offer.
We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a New Year filled with peace and joy!
The results for the Essex Law Research (ELR) Blog Prizes are in and the Law School’s Research Visibility Team is delighted to announce the winners for 2021-22.
This academic year, the ELR Blog published several pieces highlighting colleagues’ outstanding research and celebrating their funding successes. Thank you to all our contributors for your fascinating and insightful pieces. And, special thanks to our readers who follow along with the blog, seeing what ideas we have up our sleeves week after week.
The prize winners are those whose blog pieces attracted the highest number of views in the 12 months leading up to the Law School’s Research Away Week in July 2022.
Our contributors distinguished themselves in the following three categories.
Most viewed original blog post (sponsored by Hart Publishing)
Christmas is just around the corner. With all the hustle and bustle of academic life, we all need a little time off to refresh, recover and reflect. So as of next week (Monday 20 Dec. 2021), we’ll be on a short hiatus.
We hope that you can look back on a positive year with us. In 2021, we had 77 posts and thousands of visitors from 106 countries around the world. The ELR Blog will be back in January 2022 with more research news from our School.
We wish you and your family all the warmth this holiday season has to offer. We hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a New Year filled with peace and joy!
The results for the Essex Law Research Blog Awards are in and the Law School’s Research Visibility Team are delighted to announce the winners for the 2020-21 academic year.
The winners are those whose blog pieces attracted the highest number of views in the 12 months leading up to the Law School’s Research Away Week, which took place in the week commencing 12th July 2021.
Our contributors distinguished themselves in the following three categories.
Throughout the next academic year, the Essex Law Research Blog will continue celebrating the efforts and energy our colleagues in the School of Law put into sharing world-class legal research!
As of Monday, 2nd August 2021, the Essex Law Research Blog will be on a short hiatus.
We will be publishing intermittently over the next month but the full normal service will not resume until September, when we will return to share more research ideas and news from our School.
The Law Research Visibility Team sends all our readers our best wishes for a refreshing summer!