Anyone notice the problem with the following quote?:
Mr Justice Hedley said: “It is strange, but nevertheless true, that even the freedom to make unwise decisions is one that the court is required to guard and only to restrict if and when the best interests of [the woman] so require.”
Presumably, an "unwise" decision is precisely one that isn't in the best interests of the person. Hence a person's "best interests" always require that they not make "unwise" decisions. So the statement reduces to "...the freedom to make unwise decisions is one that the court is required to guard and only to restrict if and when the decisions are unwise." (*)
This "justification" is not merely fake, but entirely vacuous. The actual bottom line that isn't being acknowledged by this judge is that this person's own interests are being traded off against the interests of other people: one person's unwise decision may have consequences that other people don't want, and if enough other-people don't-want them badly enough, courts like this take it upon themselves to prevent the person from making the unwise decision.
(*) And yes, I'm aware that I could be accused of missing a logical level here -- that maybe the judge means that not only must the best interests of the person require the wise decision, they must also require that the court enforce the wise decision. But I just frankly don't believe that this -- implementing the "extrapolated volition" of that individual -- is in any sense the actual motivation of the court, as opposed to what I describe in the next paragraph.
As a lawyer, I want to provide a legal perspective on your point.
The legal system has a lot of trouble dealing with decisions which have an obvious decision-maker who is also obviously unqualified to make the decision. In a child custody dispute, asking the child to decide is the intuitive answer. But there's no reason to think that a young child (i.e. 4 years old) will make a decision that won't be regretted later. In short, who lets a child play video games longer is not likely to be the heuristic that the adult version of the child would recommend. ...
Autistic woman banned from having sex in latest Court of Protection case
This reminded me of previous LW comments about how we restrict the rights of children for their own good.
On the one hand, children can't understand the risks so we stop them having sex.
But on the other hand, animals can't understand the risks and we happily let them continue having sex.