The balance between autonomy of will and the protection of the best interests of the person with disabilities in the international sphere and in Spanish civil law

Abstract

The Hague Convention of the 13th January 2000 on the International Protection of Adults and the International Convention of the 13th December 2006 on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have promoted the autonomy of the will of persons with disabilities at the international level. Moreover, in the case of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it has gone further, relegating the role of the best interests of the person with disabilities to a secondary role, to the point that the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has interpreted that it should be completely eliminated from the regulations, a trend that has also been taken up by our national legislator. This paper will analyse the general lines of the aforementioned international texts and their impact on our domestic legal system. At the same time, it will try to measure the possible consequences of this new orientation which aims to dispense with the best interests of the person with a disability and replace it in all cases with their wishes and preferences, and will assess its compatibility with our own legal system.