Skip to main content
LIRA@BC Law

Abstract

The constitutional rights of children, the mentally ill, and other legally incompetent persons have been the subject of much litigation in the past twenty years. In this Article, Professor Garvey develops a general theory to explain the different ways in which persons of diminished capacity can be said to enjoy constitutional protections. He first notes that, of the various constitutional provisions, only one kind – freedoms, which protect the right to make choices – pose serious difficulties when applied to persons of diminished capacity. He then proposes a hierarchy of ways in which we can attribute freedoms to such persons: the laissez-faire notion that all persons (including incompetents) are to be treated identically, the instrumental idea that granting freedoms to incompetents achieves extrinsic goals such as training, and the surrogate notion that persons who cannot make choices for themselves should be able to have those closest to them choose on their behalf. Professor Garvey concludes that, when these options fail and the state takes an incompetent person under its control, the state owes to the incompetent the full package of duties owed by other guardians to those under their control, including treatment in the case of the mentally ill or education in the case of children.

Files

File nameDate UploadedVisibilityFile size
garvey_harvard.NELLCO.pdf
8 Sep 2022
Public
2.85 MB

Metrics

Metadata

  • Subject
    • Civil Rights and Discrimination

    • Education Law

    • Elder Law

    • Health Law and Policy

    • Human Rights Law

  • Journal title
    • Harvard Law Review

  • Volume
    • 94

  • Pagination
    • 1756-1794

  • Date submitted

    8 September 2022

  • Keywords