Law I Health I Justice Seminar: Professor Rosie Harding, Attending to the Polyphonic Legality of Mental Capacity Law in Everyday Decisions.
Event description
Law|Health I Justice at the
University of Technology Sydney invites you to a seminar by
Professor Rosie Harding, University of Birmingham, UK.
This talk explores the multiple voices that characterise the
everyday experience of mental capacity law, through a discussion of the
ways that people with learning disabilities and other cognitive
impairments are supported to make legally relevant decisions about their
everyday lives, or are prevented from doing so through substitute
decisions made for them by others. At times, the range of different
views and perspectives that are offered by the multiple actors in
capacity law praxis can work to obscure and overpower those of the
person whose life is at the centre of the legal problem, issue or
choice. In response, the idea of ‘polyphonic legality’ is proposed as a conceptual tool to
explore these multiple perspectives. Drawing on qualitative socio-legal
interview research alongside doctrinal analysis and secondary analysis
of court and national statistics, it is demonstrated how capacity law in an
ableist society works to silence disabled people’s voices, exploring
what this means for capacity law, and for disabled people.
About our speaker
Rosie Harding is Professor of Law and Society at the University of
Birmingham, UK and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Her
research explores the place of law in everyday life, particularly in the
contexts of ageing, disability, gender and sexuality. She uses social
science methods including both qualitative and quantitative approaches
to empirical research to investigate the place of law in everyday life,
including everyday understandings of equality, law and legal discourse,
and human rights. She was chair of the UK Socio-Legal Studies
Association from 2017-2022. She has published widely and her most recent monograph, Duties to Care: Dementia, Relationality and Law, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017). She is series editor for the Bristol University Press Law, Society, Policy book series, and editor of Supporting Legal Capacity in Socio-Legal Context (Hart, forthcoming, with Mary Donnelly and Ezgi Taşcıoğlu), Revaluing Care in Theory, Law, and Policy (Routledge, 2017, with Ruth Fletcher and Chris Beasley); Ageing and Sexualities (Routledge, 2016, with Elizabeth Peel), and Law and Sexuality (Routledge,
2017).
This event is delivered in hybrid mode: come along in person to UTS Law Faculty and join us for a light lunch, or participate online.