‘In June I argued on this blog that the Supreme Court’s decision in A Reference by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland [2026] UKSC 16 broke faith with a discipline that runs from chapter 29 of the Magna Carta through the writ of habeas corpus to Article 5: that a confinement must rest on a reason which can be stated, recorded and tested before someone other than the confiner. The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards were that discipline exercised by proxy, for people who cannot demand it for themselves. The Reference withdrew the proxy from anyone who can be read as content, by treating valid consent as independent of capacity. I said then that contentment is not consent, and that those most affected would be those least able to object.’
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UK Constitutional Law Association, 19th October 2026
Source: ukconstitutionallaw.org