Rethinking Vulnerable Adults' Protection in the light of the 2000 Hague Convention

The 2000 Hague Convention on the International Protection of Adults provides for the safeguarding in international situations of adults who, by reason of an impairment or insufficiency of their personal faculties, are not in a position to defend their interests. This article argues that the Convention not only avoids conflicts between legal systems in respect of jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition, and enforcement of measures, but also interacts with domestic substantive law. Indeed, the Convention promotes the worldwide circulation of principles and values underlying ‘vulnerable adults’ law’ in the majority of the countries represented in the Drafting Commission. Thus, it encourages the convergence of the approaches regarding the protection of vulnerable adults in Western legal systems: the first is traditionally centred on tutors and curators appointed by courts in order to replace or to assist the person in the performance of legal acts; the second is focused on self-determination and therefore on the individual’s right to appoint an agent for his or her protection in the event of a future incapacity. This ‘indirect influence’ on substantive law is determined by: (i) the codification of the principle of the ‘interests of the vulnerable adult’, (ii) a broad notion of ‘vulnerability’, (iii) the dissolution of the symmetry between protection and incapacitation of the frail adult, and (iv) the general preference for advance planning for incapacity.