ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the overlapping institutional and jurisdictional landscapes which form parts of the assemblage, and the particular experience of agents. The interwoven nature of the subject and the state in mental capacity law, and in liberal legalism more broadly, is perhaps most starkly evident in the binary framing of autonomy/paternalism and empowerment/protection. Moreover, complicating the state in this way, and being attentive to this socio-political ecology, offers a potential means to develop political theoretical approaches such as the capabilities approach discussed earlier, by providing a more critical understanding of the various processes and dynamics involved. In particular, drawing from and building on insights from feminist geography and geolegality, and from political ecology, opens up new ways to bring insights on scale into legal analysis in this context. The static framing of a decision is also bound up in the autonomy/paternalism dichotomy which underpins the limits of state responses and responsibility in mental capacity cases.
