First principles.

• Author: Gander, Lois E.
• Position: Another Viewpoint

This issue of LAWNOW focuses on two quite distinct topics: law and the older adult, and international justice. Yet a quick read across the articles on those topics tells another story--a story about the rapid change that is occurring in our society and the challenge that poses for our legal system. Longer lives, new forms of communication, and the shrinking of our global village are social and economic phenomenon that call for new ways of thinking about and applying the "first principles" that lie behind our laws.

Most of us have probably experienced some aspect of the law as it affects older adults. We've probably all written a will. We may be at the stage in our lives where we are planning for our own retirement or finding ourselves having to make or share in decisions about the care of our parents. If so, we're encountering the law of health care as we obtain the various consents, enduring wills, powers of attorney, adult guardianship orders, and non-resuscitation orders that go with the declining or potentially declining mental physical and mental capacities of those we love. We've dealt with many of those aspects of the law in previous issues of LAWNOW. But the phenomenon of an aging population is starting to show up in ways that are less obvious. Probably few of us have stopped to think about the aging prison population and what caring for inmates who have Alzheimers, who need walkers or other assists to get around, who can't dress themselves, or who can no longer even feed themselves means for correctional services. Our institutions are not physically designed to accommodate people suffering from these sorts of frailties. Rehabilitation and reintegration programs don't tend to include physical and occupational therapies to keep people cognitively and physically as functional as possible. What place do concepts like maximum, medium, and minimum security and "criminogenic factors" have in intake assessments and parole applications for these offenders? Will we respond to these challenges by creating a new forensic geriatric institution like our American neighbours? Or will we come up with something better?

Most of us probably don't give much thought to the right to marry after a certain age. May/December relationships used to be reserved for movie stars and gold diggers. We didn't expect them to turn up in our own families. But as we live longer, more and more people are remarrying later in life. How do we decide if they are legally...