Book Review: Oliver Lewis, Coercive Control and Vulnerable Adults: Law and Practice in the Court of Protection and the Inherent Jurisdiction of the High Court (Bloomsbury, 2026, 242 pp, hardback / ebook, £48.60)
If I have done one useful thing in the past few years, it was to have a conversation with the barrister (and CRPD specialist) Dr Oliver Lewis about a book idea he was working on. The rest is down to him (and to Bloomsbury, who have done an excellent job from the publishing side), but it is incredibly pleasing to see the end result – namely this extraordinarily practical and comprehensive book which should be on the bookshelf of every practitioner who appears before the Court of Protection. I say ‘every’ practitioner because one of the most important aspects of the book is how it highlights the pervasiveness of the potential for coercive control, far beyond ‘obvious’ domestic abuse situations. Reading Chapter 2, in which this is set out, should be required to enable practitioners to be on the alert for the potential for coercive control to be in play (especially where the coercion is framed as ‘care’); the following chapters then set out clearly how the law can be made to respond. Similarly, Chapter 10, setting out the traumatic effects of coercive control, is also an exceptionally useful summary of some often very complex clinical literature, enabling those acting in such cases have a clearer understanding of the minefield that they are crossing.
The book straddles both the Court of Protection and the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court: anyone who has anyone had any involvement with a case such as the ones that Lewis describes will know, capacity can be exceptionally difficult to navigate given the interaction between any impairment that the person might have and the ‘spider’s web’ effect of the pressure from the abuser. Lewis gives (in chapters 3 and 4) a very straightforward set of tools for those seeking to identify which side of the line the person is as regards their decision-making capacity in material domains, but is clear-eyed about the challenges involved. In many situations, the case may end up before the High Court on the basis that the person has capacity but is vulnerable. Lewis is a defender of the inherent jurisdiction – or, perhaps, to be precise, recognises that, since it exists (notwithstanding those who suggest that it should not), it can and should be used in ways which support the autonomy of those subject to coercion. The chapter on law and procedure under the inherent jurisdiction, together with guidance on fact-finding and remedies under the inherent jurisdiction are exceptionally helpful for Court of Protection practitioners who may find themselves very much out of their comfort zone in a case which either starts or moves into that jurisdiction (a jurisdiction which is governed by a set of procedural rules – the CPR – singularly ill-suited for the purpose).
Practicality is a hallmark of the book. It benefits from Lewis’ deep and sustained work in international human rights (see, in particular, the discussion in the concluding chapter about the inherent jurisdiction, capacity and disability rights), but never at the expense of becoming abstract or theoretical. If I could single out three chapters in particular in this regard, I do hugely wish that when I first started doing these cases I had had sight of the three chapters on representing the victim / survivor, the local authority, and the controlling person respectively, as they are sure-footed, thoughtful, and above all eminently applicable to some of the most difficult cases to appear in.
I have in this review highlighted the importance of this book for legal practitioners. It is, however, equally important, I would suggest, for social workers and others who are working with victims / survivors of coercive control as an entirely reliable guide as to the law that they will be applying outside court, and also for understanding of when and how they should be seeking to take matters to court to secure the rights of those victims and survivors.
Few books can really be said to matter; this one does.
[Full disclosure: I had sight of and made comments on the legal chapters in draft stage; I am also grateful to the publishers for providing me with a copy of this book. I am always happy to review works in or related to the field of mental capacity (broadly defined)]
