Who Can Decide?: The Six Step Capacity Assessment Process.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Kirby, Michael
• Date: 01 January 2003

Who Can Decide? The Six Step Capacity Assessment Process, Dr Peteris Darzins, Dr D William Molloy, Dr David Strang, Memory Australia Press, South Australia, 2000. 150 pages. ISBN 0-646-40343-5. RRP $39.95

One of the most remarkable legal developments of our time is the growth of the international law of human rights. It is one of the three pillars of the United Nations. Its impetus derived from the horrors and dislocations of the Second World War, the discovery of the Holocaust and other war crimes, the subsequent dismantling of colonialism and concern about economic inequality and environmental degradation. At the heart of the principles of universal human rights is a concept of the autonomy, worth and inalienable dignity of the human being.

The common law of England, one of the world's great legal systems, which has been adapted in Australia, Canada, the United States and elsewhere, also protects fundamental human rights. Indeed, all legal systems, to some extent...