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06 October 2011 / Tim Spencer-Lane
Issue: 7484 / Categories: Blogs
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Book review: Liberty and Other Misunderstandings: Some More Notes on Health Care Law

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Dr David Hewitt is a highly respected and prolific writer on mental health, incapacity, and related law.

Author: David Hewitt
Publisher: Northumbria Law Press, June 2011
ISBN: 1906596115
Price: £24.99

This is the second collection of his writings. The first, A Tendency to Laugh and Sing: Some Notes on Mental Health Law, covered his work between 1995 and 2007 (see 160 NLJ 7421, p 844). This new collection covers mainly his post-2007 articles. However, like all best sequels Liberty and Other Misunderstandings does not imitate its predecessor but instead builds on it and develops new themes.   

Structural benefits

Superficially, the difference between the two collections is structural. Liberty and Other Misunderstandings is not arranged around themes but rather in chronological order, with a detailed and extremely helpful index system. The real benefit of this structure is that it draws attention to the emergent range and depth of Hewitt’s work, particularly his deployment of philosophical insight. For example, in the astute and quirky 2008 article “Two falls, a submission or a narrative verdict”,

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