Source: https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/equality-capacity-and-disability-in-commonwealth-laws-dp-81/2-conceptual-landscape-the-context-for-reform/concepts-and-terminology/
Timestamp: 2020-07-05 19:28:46
Document Index: 554415317

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 1', 'art 12', 'art 12', 'art 12', 'art 12', 'art 12', 'art 12', 'art 12']

Concepts and terminology | ALRC
Home / Publications / Equality, Capacity and Disability in Commonwealth Laws (DP 81) / 2. Conceptual Landscape—the Context for Reform / Concepts and terminology
2.20 This Inquiry tackles issues of great significance in contributing to the framing of legal policy responses for persons with disability. The ALRC recognises the importance of careful definition of terms and a need to clarify precisely how certain concepts are being described. The language concerning disability has demonstrated great shifts over time, for example:
the distinction between ‘lunatics’ and ‘idiots’ in William Blackstone’s day in the mid-18th century;[32]
the language of ‘unsound mind’ of the early 20th century, as evident for example in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (Cth);[33]
the use of the terms ‘mentally retarded persons’ and ‘disabled persons’ in United Nations Declarations of 1971 and 1975;[34] and
2.21 As words have become associated with negative connotations, or used pejoratively, a new lexicon has been developed.[35] As the ALRC commented in its 1989 report, Guardianship and Management of Property:
There is a problem of language when dealing with people with disabilities. Some expressions which used to be common are no longer used by those working in the field because they are regarded as having connotations which tend to lower the dignity of people with disabilities.[36]
2.22 The ALRC therefore took an approach in that report which was to adopt usages ‘current among people who are disabled and those who work with them’.[37]
2.23 The present Inquiry takes place 25 years later and the language has shifted further in the intervening years. In this Inquiry the ALRC seeks to frame concepts and choose terms in ways that reflect the framing principles—in particular that of ‘dignity’. Consistent with the approach identified by the ALRC in 1989, words and terms should not be used that ‘tend to lower the dignity of people with disabilities’. Even where terms have an established usage,[38] the ALRC considers that the development of a new lexicon serves to signal the paradigm shift reflected in the CRPD. This Inquiry provides an opportunity to contribute to that process.[39]
2.24 ‘Disability’ may be defined in different ways and for different purposes. Approaches to defining disability have also shifted over time—particularly from a ‘medical’ to a ‘social’ approach. A ‘medical’ approach is one in which a diagnosis or categorisation of condition leads to consequences—for example, the imposition of guardianship.[40]
2.25 The CRPD does not include detailed definitions of ‘disability’ or ‘persons with disabilities’ in its definition section. Rather, art 1 states that
2.26 For the purposes of this Inquiry, the ALRC is taking a broad encompassing approach to definitions of disability, as reflected in the CRPD.[41] This definition includes: sensory, neurological, physical, intellectual, cognitive and psychosocial disability.
2.27 The social approach to disability, reflected in the CRPD, requires a policy focus on the person and their ability, with the support they require to interact with society and their environment—placing the policy emphasis not on ‘impairment’ but on ‘support’. This approach informs the supported decision-making focus of the ALRC’s proposals in this Discussion Paper.
2.28 The Terms of Reference require a consideration of the recognition of people with disability ‘as persons before the law’.[42] This language reflects art 12(1) of the CRPD, that ‘States Parties reaffirm that persons with disabilities have the right to recognition everywhere as persons before the law’.[43]
2.29 To be recognised ‘as persons’ is the first question in any consideration of legal capacity. Historically, certain people have been denied recognition of their ability to act in law, or to have ‘legal standing’, at all.[44] Professor Bernadette McSherry explains that,
2.30 The shift in language from ‘disabled persons’ to persons or people ‘with disability’ reflects an emphasis on personhood, rather than disability. It also reflects a social model of disability.
2.31 In its Draft General Comment on art 12, the UNCRPD emphasised that ‘there are no circumstances permissible under international human rights law in which a person may be deprived of the right to recognition as a person before the law, or in which this right may be limited’.[46] In this Discussion Paper, the ALRC proposes a model that emphasises ability and support to exercise legal agency, consistent with a full recognition of personhood. In Chapter 3, where the ALRC introduces the National Decision-Making Principles, there is a deliberate use of ‘persons’ rather than ‘people’ in the phrase ‘persons who may require decision-making support’. The choice reflects a number of elements: the direction of the Terms of Reference on recognition ‘as persons’; an understanding of legal capacity issues as individualised, task-specific and fluctuating; and a focus on an individual’s ability rather than a generic, status-based approach.
2.32 The Terms of Reference state that, for the purposes of this Inquiry, equal recognition before the law and legal capacity are to be understood as they are used in the CRPD, ‘including to refer to the rights of people with disability to make decisions and act on their own behalf’. The concept of equality therefore emphasises independent decision-making by persons with disability.
2.33 Professor Terry Carney stated that equality, in the sense used in art 12, ‘can be variously formulated’:
2.34 The UNCRPD emphasised that the idea of equality reflected in art 12 is essentially about the exercise of human rights: ‘[e]quality before the law is a basic and general principle of human rights protection and is indispensable for the exercise of other human rights’.[48] Rather than providing additional rights, art 12 of the CRPD ‘simply describes the specific elements required to ensure the right to equality before the law for people with disabilities on an equal basis with others’.[49]
2.35 In this Inquiry, the ALRC is considering how equal recognition of persons with disability as persons before the law and their ability to exercise legal capacity is denied or diminished in laws and legal frameworks within the Commonwealth jurisdiction.
2.36 The key element in equal recognition, as understood in the CRPD and the discourse that has developed around it, is the embracing of a supported decision-making paradigm so that persons with disability are acknowledged as having the right to make decisions on an equal basis with others and are supported in exercising that right. The linking of support with equality was made in submissions. For example, Hobsons Bay City Council, while supporting the framing principles, said that
2.37 The Terms of Reference require consideration of Commonwealth laws and legal frameworks that deny or diminish the ability of persons with disability to exercise ‘legal capacity’. This language reflects art 12(2) of the CRPD, that ‘States Parties shall recognize that persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life’. The Terms of Reference state that, for the purposes of this Inquiry, legal capacity is to be understood as it is used in the CRPD.
2.40 Legal capacity sets the threshold for undertaking certain actions that have legal consequences. For example, a range of transactions may involve an age threshold as a benchmark of when a person is regarded as being able to act independently and with binding effect—to have legal agency to make ‘legally effective choices’.[53] Legal capacity goes to the validity, in law, of choices and being accountable for the choices made. As Carney states:
2.42 The common law starts from a presumption of legal capacity—‘the law’s endorsement of autonomy’.[57] Common law definitions of legal capacity are generally invoked after the event, when a transaction is later challenged on the basis of a lack of capacity (in the sense of agency) to rebut the presumption of legal capacity.[58] The definitions in these contexts focus on the nature of the transaction and the level of understanding required for legal agency. The common law—including doctrines of equity—also includes protective doctrines for vulnerable people, such as the doctrines concerning undue influence and unconscionable transactions.[59] Where a lack of the required level of understanding is proven in the particular circumstances, the transaction may be set aside. Such doctrines focus on a transaction and the circumstances surrounding it. They are decision-specific and involve assessments of understanding relevant to the transaction being challenged. As Bruce Arnold and Dr Wendy Bonython commented,
2.43 Capacity assessments have been made as the trigger for formal arrangements for decision-making support through the appointment of, for example, guardians and administrators—or for the commencement of enduring powers of attorney and advance directives. They are also made in the context of a range of health care decisions.
2.46 Stakeholders emphasised the distinction between legal capacity and mental capacity. For example, People with Disability Australia (PWDA), the Australian Centre for Disability Law (ACDL) and the Australian Human Rights Centre (AHRC) commented that any proposal for a uniform approach to legal capacity
must remove any notion that the assessment of mental capacity is also an assessment of legal capacity, that assessing mental capacity is a mechanism through which to limit legal capacity, and that the existence of a cognitive impairment creates a limit to the exercise of legal agency. Concerns with the provisions in, and operation of, legislation …cannot be ameliorated or rectified without an acceptance of this premise.[65]
2.47 This reflects two concerns: first, that legal capacity assessments should not simply be equated with mental capacity; and, secondly, that people with cognitive impairment should not be assumed to have limited legal capacity, in the sense of being able to exercise legal agency.
2.50 In this Inquiry the ALRC suggests that even the word ‘capacity’ may carry some of the connotations of previous times. ‘Capacity’ is regularly confused with ‘legal capacity’, and ‘legal capacity’ is regularly conflated with ‘mental capacity’. To avoid such confusion and to focus the reform direction towards support in decision-making, the ALRC uses ‘ability’.[68]
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765) vol 1, 292.
Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons, GA Res 2856, UN GAOR, 3rd Comm, 26th Sess, UN Doc A/RES/2856 (20 December 1971). Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons, GA Res 3447, UN GAOR, 3rd Comm, 30th Sess, UN Doc A/RES/3447 (9 December 1975).
Terry Carney, ‘Guardianship, “Social” Citizenship and Theorising Substitute Decision-Making Law’ in Israel Doron and Ann M Soden (eds), Beyond Elder Law (Springer, 2012) 1. See also World Health Organisation and World Bank, ‘World Report on Disability’ (2011) 3–4.
The term ‘States Parties’ is used in this Discussion Paper to ensure consistency with the terminology in the CRPD.
United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, General Comment No 1 (2014) on Article 12 of the Convention—Equal Recognition before the Law [5].
Terry Carney, above n 40, 3. See also Terry Carney, ‘Participation and Service Access Rights for People with Intellectual Disability: A Role for Law?’ (2013) 38 Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability 59, 66.
United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, General Comment No 1 (2014) on Article 12 of the Convention—Equal Recognition before the Law [1].
The right to recognition as a legal agent is also reflected in art 12(5) CRPD, which outlines the duty of States Parties to ‘take all appropriate and effective measures to ensure the equal right of persons with disabilities to own or inherit property, to control their own financial affairs and to have equal access to bank loans, mortgages and other forms of financial credit and shall ensure that persons with disabilities are not arbitrarily deprived of their property: United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, General Comment No 1 (2014) on Article 12 of the Convention—Equal Recognition before the Law [11]. See also Bernadette McSherry, ‘Legal Capacity Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ (2012) 22 Legal Issues 23.
Contracts: Blomley v Ryan (1954) 99 CLR 362. Wills: Banks v Goodfellow (1870) LR 5 QB 549. See also: Victorian Law Reform Commission, Guardianship, Final Report No 24 (2012) ch 7.
For example, in the context of wills, a person is presumed to have the legal capacity to make a will and it is for those who challenge a testator’s capacity to bring evidence of incapacity: Bull v Fulton (1942) 66 CLR 295. The presumption of capacity arises if the will is rational on its face and is duly executed. See, eg, G E Dal Pont and KF Mackie, Law of Succession (LexisNexis Butterworths, 2013) ch 2. This was expressed in the legal maxim ‘omnia praesumuntur rite et somemniter esse acta’: all acts are presumed to have been done rightly and regularly.
See, eg, J D Heydon and M J Leeming, Cases and Materials on Equity and Trusts (LexisNexis Butterworths, 8th ed, 2011) ch 14.
See, eg, Guardianship and Administration Act 2000 (Qld) sch 1 cl 1, (WA) s 4(3).
See, eg, the distinction between medical and legal perspectives in Terry Carney, above n 40.
United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, General Comment No 1 (2014) on Article 12 of the Convention—Equal Recognition before the Law [12].
PWDA, ACDL and AHRC, Submission 66.
National Disability Services, Submission 49. See also PWDA, ACDL and AHRC, Submission 66.