III. Jurisdiction in Lunacy;

AuthorRaymond Jennings
Date01 July 1960
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1960.tb00616.x
Published date01 July 1960
JULY
1960
STATUTES
421
there will remain the problem of communicating with the courts
and ensuring that the best advice is offered at an early stage.
It
may indeed become more acute. Such centres might provide
remand investigations in association with remand centres. But
the use which is made
of
the Act will ultimately depend upon the
provision
of
treatment institutions and units.
T.
C.
N.
GIBBENS.
111.
Ju..risdiction in Lunacy;
The
New
Look
When Part
8
of the Mental Health Act, 1959, comes into operation,
the jurisdiction in lunacy will get a new look but there will be
no
wind of change.38
To
appreciate the new, one must first
look
at the old.
The present jurisdiction
At the present day the jurisdiction is partly statutory and partly
an inherent jurisdiction derived from the royal prerogative, exer-
cised by those to whom
it
has been entrusted by mandate under
the Sign Manual. The origin
of
the prerogative jurisdiction is lost
in the mists of antiquity, and
it
is
outside the scope
of
this article
to try to penetrate those mists, but
it
can at any rate be said that
the right and duty of the King to protect the estates of lunatics
3g
was recognised by the Statute de Prerogativa Regis.4o The inherent
jurisdiction could only be exercised in respect of persons who were
found, after
a
solemn inquiry
("
inquisition
"),
to be of unsound
mind
("
lunatics
so
found
")
and the inquisition was followed,
if
the subject was found to be a lunatic, by the appointment of
a
person to whom the management of his affairs, and perhaps also of
his person, was committed
("
the committee
").
Many persons
suffer from a degree of mental disorder not amounting to unsound-
ness of mind but sufficient to make them incapable of managing
their affairs, and these were outside the lunacy jurisdiction. More-
over, the procedure by inquisition was complicated and expensive,
and the result was that a large class of persons, lunatics in fact
though not
so
found, and persons who, although not lunatics, had
become incapable of managing their affairs, had no protection
so
far as their estates were concerned.
This unhappy state of affairs continued, except for some minor
legislation relating to small estates, until the Lunacy Act, 1890
(58
Vict.
c.
5).
This Act, in
so
far as
it
related to the estates of
mentally incompetent persons, regulated the conduct
of
inquisitions,
38
The date has not yet been fixed but
is
unlikely to be
Png
dela7,ed.
39
In
the context
:f
the law
of
lunac
40
Temp. incert., cc.
11,
12.
the expressions lunatic
and
"
person
of
are interchangeabfe; see Mental Treatment Act, 1930,
8.
20
(5).
unsound mind

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