ABSTRACT
Legal rules may require objectivity but a central feature of the complaints canvassed in the previous chapter was the contamination of what (apparently) should be decisions based on the subjective wishes or interests of the individual patient with more ‘objective’ considerations, as judged by someone other than the patient, or his or her intimates. This does not mean that the patient is forced to adopt a ‘view from nowhere’, 1 since that view is inevitably clouded by the subjective lens through which the ultimate decision-maker – typically a judge or a doctor – experiences the world. This additional layer of subjectivity undoubtedly contributes to the inconsistency and confusion written through the law pertaining to the removal of treatment from incompetent patients.
