The Introduction summarises the core themes of the book and outlines how the argument will proceed over the course of its chapters. It explains why the issue it centres around – namely, how the law grapples with the impact of mental disorder on decision-making – is so important, and why successfully navigating the tension between respect for (and deference to) idiosyncratic values, and protection from disorder or impairment, must be a precondition of England and Wales adopting ‘fused’ mental capacity and health legislation, or a more CRPD-compliant statutory framework. It also explains how the book relates to the existing literature in this area, which has focused in recent years on concerns about the binary nature of the capacity framework, and on the individualistic and rational ‘liberal subject’ on which this framework rests. Finally, it elaborates briefly on some of the concepts which the book will draw upon, in particular what is meant by ‘values’ and ‘beliefs’.

Here, we dive deeper into the realm of reversible Markov chains, via the perspective of network theory. The notions of conductance and resistance are defined, as well as voltage and current, and the corresponding mathematical theory.The Laplacian and Green function are defined and their relation to harmonic functions explained. The chapter culminates with a proof (using network theory) that recurrence and transience are essentially group properties: these properties remain invariant when changing between different reasonable random walks on the same group (specifically, symmetric and adapted with finite second moment).

This chapter reorients readings of Harriet Jacobs’s and Harriet Wilson’s (semi)autobiographies as narratives of disability. I underscore the inextricable links between girlhood, labor, and disability began in their self-authored texts, alongside Jean Fagan Yellin’s publication of The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers and other documents which detail the life of Harriet Wilson. I argue that these life writings demonstrate each woman’s post-captivity labors as a challenge to nineteenth-century extractive economies of bondage. Studying the (semi)autobiographies, public and private correspondence, journal entries, and newspaper advertisements related to Harriet Jacobs and Harriet Wilson not only makes legible their disabled lives, but also provides a complex understanding of the interrelation between labor, disability, capacity, and resistance.

This chapter deals with public health and pandemic preparedness. It recognises the five stages of a new pandemic (detection, assessment, treatment, escalation and recovery). The chapter also deals with the issue of laboratory preparedness and the need to maintain a critical mass of laboratory and skilled staff expertise at all times in order to be able to respond rapidly and effectively to a new emerging pandemic.

In Australia, the intentional teaching of social and emotional competencies and the implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL) programs have increasingly engaged early childhood educators over the last decade. Disruptions to normal routines from fires, floods and the COVID−19 pandemic have heightened the need to support children, families and educators, and have made SEL an essential part of curricula (Cahill et al., 2020). This chapter establishes the broad rationale and key concepts associated with SEL, and also details recommended approaches and evidence-based practices relevant to teaching for SEL. It also considers the crucial role that educators play in supporting young children during troublesome times.

The law presumes that all persons are capable of guiding their own day-to-day lives, but the presence of various types and degrees of mental disability or mental incapacity can call this capability into question. When competency is convincingly demonstrated to be impaired, to the extent that decision-making requires input, persistent guidance, or outright control by some external entity, the civil courts might elect at that juncture to impose some form of “substituted judgment.” Substituted judgment undertakes to address three broad and potentially overlapping decision-making domains, described here with brief accompanying examples: prior judgment (regarding wills and other advance directives), present judgment (regarding informed consent and the corresponding right to refuse treatment), and future judgment (regarding guardianship and conservatorship). This chapter will explore each of these domains in detail, identifying the contributions mental health professionals can make to reliable and valid forensic assessment in this regard.

This chapter considers children’s evolving capacities, particularly during adolescence. The law must value adolescence, while also recognising the risks it may entail. The chapter starts by reviewing some of the extensive body of research on children’s developing capacity for decision-making and explores how it might inform the law on adolescence. The chapter then considers the legal principles governing the relationship between adolescents and their parents. That law is ambivalent both over the extent of parental authority and the circumstances in which mature adolescents should be recognised as having the ability to make decisions over their own lives, regardless of the views of their parents. The chapter concludes by considering the application of these general principles in the fraught context of deprivation of liberty. The law’s confused approach to adolescent decision-making and parental authority leaves adolescents at risk of being deprived of this most important of rights without access to the legal safeguards that protect adults. This area of law is an excellent example of the practical consequences of the law’s ambivalence on adolescent autonomy and the role of parents.

In preparation for Chapters 5–7 – which detail the three components of the proposed trust-based framework – this chapter addresses three issues. With reference to the social rights literature, it first substantiates the conclusion that social rights are justiciable, justifying the need for an enforcement framework to be used by the courts. Secondly, the chapter describes how the courts can use the concept of political trust as the basis for a social rights enforcement framework. It explains that under the trust-based framework, the courts promote the elected branches’ trustworthiness with respect to social rights. The courts specifically hold the elected branches to a ‘standard of trustworthiness’, effectively enforcing the three constituent expectations of trust in the citizen-government relationship – goodwill, competence and fiduciary responsibility. Lastly, the chapter outlines four justifications – theoretical, instrumental, practical and democratic – for why political trust should provide the basis for a social rights enforcement framework.

this chapter will discuss the regulation of personal capacity (ahliya) and agency under the civil law of Qatar and will not deal with the issue of competence pertinent to foreign investors or specific competence of state (or administrative) entities, even if said competence concerns contractual freedom. The chapter deals with the most important types of agency and hence several are missing from this discussion. It will become clear from the discussion relating to personal capacity that several (but not all) principles underpinning classical Islamic law have been incorporated in the Qatari CC, despite the fact that they are to a large degree antiquated and out of touch with Qatar’s international obligations.

This chapter focuses on informed consent, the cornerstone of conducting ethical human subjects research. It presents a brief history of the origins of informed consent to research and reviews codes, guidelines, and regulations that have been established in response to ethical violations carried out in the name of science. The chapter reviews the essential elements of consent (i.e., intelligence, knowingness, and voluntariness) and discusses challenges that researchers may encounter within each of these areas. Importantly, it approaches consent as an ongoing process rather than a one-time-event and presents practical and empirically supported strategies that researchers can apply to assess and enhance individuals’ capacity, understanding, and autonomy as it pertains to research participation. Additional topics discussed include assent to research that involves children, electronic and multimedia consent, and consent to research using biospecimens.

The introduction to this volume captures virtue's dizzying variety by explaining its roots in classical ethics, transformation through theological appropriation, and engagement with global wisdom traditions. We propose that the work of Shakespeare patches together virtue's many realizations, active both on the horizontal axis of Aristotelian capacity and dynamism and the vertical axis of Judeo-Christian valuation. Threading together exemplary passages from Shakespeare and previews of the volume's contributions, the introduction proposes that Shakespeare creates virtue ecologies -- worlds that allow for person-affirming capacities to be tested and flourish. Alive to virtue's textual and performative dimensions, we establish a vocabulary and background for the essays that follow.

If Aristotle understood virtue (aretē) to refer to the realization of a potential capacity or telos, then how might we understand the world to reach its virtuous potential? What might it mean to view our own global present as not an apex but as a passing stage within a broader process of worlding? Understanding the world as a live entity that perpetually worlds its way into new actualizations -- manifesting the dynamic capacities, potential, and striving of “virtue” -- this chapter turns to Shakespeare as a source for alternative models of world that awaken us to its inherent potentiality. For example, in As You Like It, the condition of exile unlocks a paradigm of seeing otherwise -- and often optimistically -- that runs throughout the play, enabling characters to form new bonds that serve as the basis for individual and communal flourishing. I examine the extent to which the play’s new community of relationships makes a place for nonhuman animals as well as for the pessimism and self-exile of Jaques. Such models enable us to not only see around and beyond the realities of our globalized world but also to perceive alternative formulations of world as already present and alive in the world we live in.

Climate services (CS) and agricultural advisory services (AAS) have the potential to play synergistic roles in helping farmers manage climate-related risk, providing they are integrated. For information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled, climate-informed AAS to contribute towards transformation, the focus must shift from scaling access to scaling impact. With expanding rural ICT capacity and mobile phone penetration, digital innovation brings significant opportunities to improve access to services. Achieving impact requires the following actions: building farmers’ capacity and voice; employing a diverse delivery strategy for CS that exploits digital innovation; bundling CS, agri-advisories, and other services; investing in institutional capacity; and embedding services in a sustainable and enabling environment in terms of policy, governance, and resourcing. Recent experiences in several countries demonstrate how well targeted investments can alleviate constraints and enhance the impact of climate-informed AAS.