Ralph Sandland

Mental health law : policy and practice

1. Conceptualising mental health law 2. An overview of the contemporary mental health system 3. Community care 4. The Mental Capacity Act 5. Deprivation of liberty under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 6. Civil detention under the Mental Health Act 7. Policing mental disorder 8. Mental disorder and criminal justice 9. Medical treatment 10. Control in the community 11. Ending compulsion under the Mental Health Act 12. Legal responses and advocacy for clients

The Real, the Simulacrum, and the Construction of 'Gypsy' in Law

When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full significance. There is a proliferation of myths of origins and signs of reality; of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity. There is an escalation of the true; of the lived experience; a resurrection of the figurative where the object and the substance have disappeared. And there is a panic-stricken production of the real and the referential . ..

Adoption, law and homosexuality: Can gay people adopt a child?

In the light of the view expressed in the recently published Review of Adoption Law that there should be no absolute prohibition on adoption by homosexual persons, this article explores the law as ...

Sex and Capacity: The Management of Monsters?

The first consideration by a civil court of the test of capacity to engage in sexual relations – X City Council v MB, NB and MAB – is as recent as 2005. This article places this and subsequent cases in the historical context of the way in which the law has constructed the sexuality of persons with intellectual impairment. The article argues that, beginning with a series of rape cases in the mid to late nineteenth century, which recognised the concept of consent given through the expression of animal instincts, the law has accepted and deployed a model of intellectual impairment which understands expressions of sexuality in terms of an increasingly unstable opposition between vulnerability and danger, understood as the presence or absence of instinct, and as indicating an underlying ‘monstrosity’. The article argues that the historical continuity apparent in the modern case law is unfortunate and should be rectified.

Not `Social Justice': The Housing Association, the Judges, the Tenant and his Lover Fitzpatrick v. Sterling Housing Association [1997] 4 All E.R. 991; [1998] 1 F.L.R. 6 (C.A.); [1999] 4 All E.R. 705 (H.L.)

This note analyses the decision of the House of Lords in Fitzpatrick, which held that gay partners could fall within the legal definition of ‘family’ for some purposes. The note argues that despite the real (if overstated) benefits that this case bestows on gay partners in the form of legal rights, under analysis, the decision self-deconstructs to reveal that it is grounded on the principle of discrimination on the basis of sexuality. However, it is also suggested that the encounter between discursive legal reasoning (underpinned by normative heterosexuality), and aversion of the family which is ‘other’ to this discourse, is one which leaves its mark on law, as the potential undermining or deconstruction of law’s normative assumptions. The note further argues that although this decision is properly seen as a moment in the struggle for gay rights, it also serves as a reminder that the fortunes of critical theories and political movements that seek to challenge the legal paradigm of the white, heterosexual male are inextricably linked. Fitzpatrick, whatever else it is, is also an object lesson in the debt that current campaigns for gay legal rights owe to feminist critiques of, and campaigns that have successfully challenged, the role of this norm in legal discourse.

Problems in the criminal law of adoption

Abstract How the criminal sanctions which are currently contained in ss. 11 and 57 of the Adoption Act 1976 should properly be interpreted and applied is a matter which has consistently eluded authoritative judicial definition. The impending reform of adoption law presents an opportunity to clarify the scope, definition, and effects of a breach of these provisions. This article (1) argues that the Review of Adoption Law and the White Paper Adoption: the Future have not given sufficient cognizance to the problems which these sections have caused the courts and (2) suggests reforms which should be made to the law in order to minimize the difficulties which the judiciary has hitherto experienced.

The common law and the informal' minor patient

Abstract Case: R. v Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council, exparte C Law report of case: [1993] 2 Family Law Reports 187