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12 Elder L. Rev. [i] (2019)

handle is hein.journals/elr12 and id is 1 raw text is: RELATIONAL AUTONOMY, VULNERABILITY THEORY, OLDER ADULTS AND THE LAW: MAKING IT REAL MARGARET ISABEL HALL* Abstract The 'making it real' theme of this collection concerns the ways in which theories or conceptualisations of vulnerability and autonomy are and/or can be 'made real' through legal structures and practice. This introductory essay discusses autonomy and vulnerability as words/ideas with multiple meanings within legal doctrines and legal discourse. These meanings include the traditional equivalence in law between autonomy and the liberty of a normatively invulnerable liberal subject, the very different idea of autonomy as (necessarily) relational, and the burgeoning theoretical discourse around vulnerability as a legally meaningful idea. In this introductory essay, the author sets out her own approach to/articulation of vulnerability and relational autonomy as legally meaningful concepts, together with suggestions for making these conceptual frameworks 'real' in the law relating to advance planning and court appointed/statutory guardianship (as areas of law with particular relevance for older adults). I. INTRODUCTION Truth happens to an idea, it becomes true, it is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its-verification. 1 The papers in this special issue of the Elder Law Review consider different aspects of and approaches to the concepts of vulnerability and autonomy within areas of the law with particular relevance to the experience of older adults. The words 'vulnerability' and 'autonomy' have no essentialist meaning, as reflected in the diverse contributions to this issue. There is no right or wrong way to talk about either idea, although some approaches are more useful than others in terms of the basis they provide for social and legal action. The traditional meanings of autonomy and vulnerability in law (autonomy as liberty and the location of vulnerability in 'vulnerable populations') have become so fused with existing legal rules and structures that it is difficult now to see them for what they are: provisional versions or accounts of what it means to be vulnerable, and to be a person in possession of autonomy. The *Professor and BC Notaries Chair, School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada. The author would like to thank and acknowledge the Macquarie University Research Centre for Agency, Values and Ethics and the Macquarie University Faculty of Law as hosts of a 2018 workshop on the theme of relational autonomy, vulnerability and making it real, which served as the genesis for this collection. 1 William James, Pragmatism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975) 35.

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