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Legal Capacity in the Civil Legal Lives of Persons with Dementia in Taiwan: Implications of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

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Living with Dementia

Part of the book series: Advances in Neuroethics ((AIN))

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Abstract

As the number of persons with dementia increases around the world, dementia is becoming a major public mental health and economic issue. Law, which is just as much a part and parcel of culture, is an important sector for constructing an integrated institutional framework to respect the dignity of and offer care to persons with dementia. However, literature that systematically explores the legal lives of persons with dementia has been inadequate. This chapter initially attempts to delineate the approaches to legal capacity that separately emphasize personal status, behavior outcome, personal function and human rights as the main consideration for determining legal capacity. It covers institutions of disability certificate, long-term and short-term legal capacity for nonspecified events, and short-term legal capacity for health care events in Taiwan. Based on public surveys and court decision datasets in Taiwan, this chapter aims to demonstrate the ambivalence, complexity and difficulty for Taiwan to comply with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). A hasty implementation of the CRPD’s ideal of legal capacity for all not only clashes with people’s cultural imaging of civil legal lives, but also may lead to violations of other human rights protected by the CRPD. Though the CRPD General Comment No. 1 opposes the use of mental capacity for determining legal capacity, it is still inevitable we use the concept of mental capacity to determine whether persons with dementia are able to communicate and express their will and preferences. For the time being, neuroscience is neither necessary nor sufficient for determining legal capacity in Taiwan. The chapter suggests that we could use the concept of wide reflective equilibrium to understand the evolution of legal capacity institution. With incremental enhancement of reasonable accommodation and support, the CRPD and neuroscience may shift the equilibrium point of legal capacity in the long run. But, a rush to adopt the ideal of legal capacity for all may hinder the protections of human rights to health and finance, among others.

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Acknowledgement

KCC Wu was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST 105-2410-H-002-007-SS3; MOST 108-2321-B-002-002 -).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department/Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Bioethics, National Taiwan University College of Medicine School of Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan

    Kevin Chien-Chang Wu

  2. Department of Psychiatry, National Taiwan University College of Medicine School of Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan

    Kevin Chien-Chang Wu

  3. Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, Taipei City, Taiwan

    Kevin Chien-Chang Wu

  4. National Taiwan University College of Law, Taipei City, Taiwan

    Kevin Chien-Chang Wu

  5. Institute of Health Policy and Management, National Taiwan University College of Public Health, Taipei City, Taiwan

    Kevin Chien-Chang Wu

  6. Department of Psychiatry, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei City, Taiwan

    Kevin Chien-Chang Wu

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  1. Kevin Chien-Chang Wu
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Correspondence to Kevin Chien-Chang Wu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, and Science Technology and Society (STS) Program, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Veljko Dubljević

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Frances Bottenberg

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Wu, K.CC. (2021). Legal Capacity in the Civil Legal Lives of Persons with Dementia in Taiwan: Implications of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In: Dubljević, V., Bottenberg, F. (eds) Living with Dementia. Advances in Neuroethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62073-8_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62073-8_14

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