Giving Meaning to Values in Mental Capacity Law

The place of values in legal and judicial practice has long been debated in academic discussions of the ideal / non-ideal functional roles of lawyers and judges in applying the law. Values in the law evoke various overlapping concerns, ranging from the ways in which values (legal or extra-legal) provide an implicit or explicit heuristic structure that houses legal frameworks, to how values may affirm, justify, or be interpreted into basic tenets of a legal framework, to the manner in which the values of the person impacted by the law may warrant distinct considerations in legal decision-making. Although rarely labelled as such, values infuse the vocabulary used in the application of the law. Notably this happens in judicial appeals to common law principles that may circumscribe the application of law, or steer the direction in which it develops; principles such as bodily integrity, dignity, or the sanctity of life. It happens too where overarching principles orientate statutory regimes and foreground the direction of judicial interventions. And as a final example, it occurs where principles regarding statutory construction limit the most obvious or literal interpretation of a legal prescription. The explicit recognition of values within the body of legislative frameworks, however, remains rare; in particular where the focus is
not on overarching legal or interpretative principles, but rather concerns distinctly personal values that may be called on to settle a particular legal question.