Book Talk: Advance Directives Across Asia: A Comparative Socio-legal Analysis, edited by Daisy Cheung and Michael Dunn (CUP 2023)

This book, which includes contributions from 16 jurisdictions, is the first to consider comprehensively and systematically the law and practice of advance directives across Asia. It aims to serve not only as a reference volume that documents how advance directives are regulated and used throughout Asia, but also as an exploration of the concept of the advance directive itself, in context. By examining how advance directives operate in Asian countries, we shed light on the principle of personal autonomy in this context, alongside other values and religious and socio-cultural factors that shape health and care decision-making. As such, this book aims to have broad appeal not only to Asian scholars, students, policymakers and practitioners in the fields of health law and ethics and end-of-life care more generally, but is also expected to be of wider interest to an international academic audience in the fields of law, ethics and health and social care research.

Daisy Cheung is an Assistant Professor of Law and Deputy Director and Research Fellow at the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law, The University of Hong Kong (HKU). Daisy’s research focuses on mental health and capacity law. Her publications include analyses on a number of issues related to Hong Kong’s Mental Health Ordinance (MHO), including its compulsory detention treatment regime, its conditional discharge regime and the problematic way in which mental capacity is conceived of and assessed in different contexts under the MHO. She has published on public mental health ethics in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, and has written on mental capacity law and ethics across several contexts, including an RGC-funded project on adult guardianship regimes and an edited collection on advance medical directives in Asia (forthcoming 2023, Cambridge University Press). She is currently working on a RGC-funded project on best interests determinations on behalf of individuals who lack capacity, and an ongoing project on the implications of novel neurointerventions on mental capacity law and ethics. She currently teaches the courses ‘Mental Disability and the Law’ and ‘Beginning and End of Life’. She is a member of the Mental Health Law Committee of the Law Society of Hong Kong and is a co-founder of a support group for persons on conditional discharge in Hong Kong.