International Protection of Adults – the book is finally out

For all those with an interest in cross-border and comparative capacity issues, I’m delighted to announce that The International Protection of Adults, the book that I have been working on for several years with Richard Frimston, Adrian Ward and Claire van Overdijk, has now finally been published by OUP.   The introduction is available here, and a paper summarising some of the key cross-border capacity issues that are encountered in England and Wales here.

To give an idea of the scope of the book, which weights in at 896 pages (!), I reproduce below the entry in the OUP catalogue:

“Increasing numbers of people have connections with one country, but live and work in another, frequently owning property or investments in several countries. People with lifelong or subsequently developed impairments of capacity move cross-border or have property or family interests or connections spread across different jurisdictions. This new work fills a gap in a specialist market for a detailed work advising lawyers on all the considerations in these situations.

The book provides a clear, comprehensive, and unique overview of all relevant capacity and private international law issues, and the existing solutions in common law and civil law jurisdictions and under Hague Convention 35. It sets out the existing law of various important jurisdictions, including detailed chapters on the constituent parts of the UK, Ireland, Jersey, the Isle of Man and the Hague 35 states; and shorter chapters on 26 Non-Hague states and those within federal states, including coverage of the United States, several Australian and Canadian states, and a number of other Commonwealth jurisdictions. Containing a number of helpful case studies and flowcharts, the book draws upon the expertise of the editors in their respective fields, together with detailed contributions from expert practitioners and academics from each relevant jurisdiction.”

For my part, I hope that the book will serve not just to raise awareness of the importance of the issues that arise when capacity cases cross borders, but also serves to raise awareness of how different states approach the protection of adults with impaired capacity.   Raising our heads above the domestic parapet is an extremely useful exercise to stress-test whether the approach that we have adopted in the MCA 2005 is necessarily the best.