Therése Fridström Montoya - an odd researcher?

This year marks the 100th anniversary of a 1924 law that rarely gets much attention. Therése Fridström Montoya, associate professor and senior lecturer in civil law and PhD in public law, wanted to change that. Recently, the festschrift ‘En liten vital 100-åring - Festskrift till 1924 års lag om verkan av avtal, som slutits under påverkan av en psykisk störning’ was published with Therése as editor, and it is she who is the focus of this research portrait. The festschrift is a typical example of the kind of research questions she has devoted herself to.

Therése Fridström Montoya describes herself as “a slightly odd” researcher at Juridicum because - as both a lawyer and a social worker - she is actually more interested in people than in law. But in her opinion, there are many interesting and rarely researched issues at the interface between people and the law. One example is what is required to invalidate a legal act under the 1924 Act on the grounds that the act was entered into under the influence of a mental disorder. Another example is what is required in more general terms in different areas of law for people to be recognized as legal agents with legal capacity in various areas of Law (which her second monograph from 2017, Homo Juridicus. The Capable Human in Law, was about).

Questions about people's ability to to be recognized as legal agents are fundamentally also about norms and power, which were important aspects of Therese's thesis. In her thesis (To Live Like Others Through Legal Representation - A Legal and Factual Paradox, 2015), the aim was to investigate the position in law as a legal subject and self-determining subject of a certain group of people, namely adults with intellectual disabilities. In today's society, persons with this disability have, on the one hand, far-reaching human and social rights, but, on the other hand, they may lack the actual ability to claim or denounce violations of these rights. In order for these rights to be realized, an intermediary is needed, a so-called legal representative, who can represent the person in various legal contexts. However, the Swedish rules on legal representation for persons´with disabilities originate in another law from 1924: the Guardianship Act. In her thesis, Therése investigated how social and human rights interact with the rules on legal representation for persons’ with disabilities. The short answer in her thesis is that they are conflicting. The longer answer is that issues of self-determination, lack of capacity and the need for support and protection of adults are complex. They have also had different emphases over different periods of time, as reflected in the different regulatory frameworks that have emerged at different times.

Therése explains that the main criticism that can be levelled at the regulation in Swedish law today for people who, due to disabilities, cannot themselves claim or point out violations of their rights, is that the rules on legal representation have not been adapted to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. By ratifying the Convention, Sweden has promised to guarantee all people equality before the law, both as rights holders and as legal agents. However, this is a difficult goal to achieve if you consider that some people not only lack the ability to legally pursue their own issues, but also lack the ability to understand what rights are, how they can be realized, where to turn, etc. They need support to be able to be legal agents on equal terms with others, and there are major shortcomings here in Sweden.

As a researcher, Therése has mainly studied legal issues relating to people with disabilities, and in her opinion, there are many important legal issues to be investigated in the field of disability. However, there are few legal scholars in Sweden who specialize in disability issues. She herself has mostly investigated various issues of legal representation in the meeting with other areas of law, but she has also collaborated for a number of years with a researcher in ethics from Lund University on issues of consent as a legal act in different areas of law. I ett . In a forthcoming interdisciplinary research project where law is combined with ethics and sociology (and led by another researcher at Juridicum, Moa Dahlin), Therése will focus on “förvaltarskap” (a form of legal representation) in relation to issues of decision-making capacity and compulsory care.

She says the following about the current state of her research:

The book that has just come out about the 1924 Act is the latest piece in a big jigsaw puzzle that I'm putting together for myself about how things work around different disabilities and different parts of the law. My own contribution to the book is about how the lower courts today think about what a mental disorder is and when legal acts - such as entering into a contract - are affected by the fact that a person has a mental disorder when a certain legal act was done, and if that means that the legal act is considered invalid. But as soon as one piece of the jigsaw is put in place, I discover new missing pieces. That puzzle will never be finished.

Therése is characterized by a strong commitment to people in vulnerable positions, especially those with disabilities of various kinds. This commitment has led her to take on the part-time role of Director of the Centre for Research on Disability at Uppsala University from autumn 2023. The Centre's work includes disseminating knowledge about disability and giving researchers the opportunity to share their research in different ways such as through a periodical journal, an open lecture series and short interview films with researchers about their research (published via YouTube). Therése says that it is a lot of fun and feels very meaningful to manage the Centre in question, but that she still primarily sees herself as a researcher and teacher at Juridicum.

For her efforts as a teacher, she received Uppsala University's pedagogical prize this year.