ABSTRACT
Consent plays an important role in our life. It does so by affecting both our moral and our legal rights and obligations. For instance, consent often makes acts morally permissible that would be impermissible without consent. Actions of various kinds may only be done to competent adults if and because they consented to them – medical treatment, clinical research, and sexual acts are the most common examples. In those cases, as well as in many others, the affected person’s consent not only makes a difference to whether or not the action is morally acceptable, it is also required for it to be legally permissible. Many legal codes, as well as the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Geneva, the modern version of the Hippocratic Oath, require physicians to respect a patient’s decision to give or withhold their consent to a procedure, even if the patient does not follow the physician’s recommendation. Similarly, the laws and regulations of many countries allow medical and other research on human subjects only if the research subject’s informed consent has been obtained beforehand. If the subject is incapable of giving it, the informed consent of an authorized proxy must be sought. This requirement is also included in the Declaration of Helsinki, the World Medical Association’s principles for human subject research. But the moral and legal relevance of consent extends far beyond the medical sphere. Most importantly, non-consensual sex, whether it is violently imposed or not, is now widely acknowledged to be a serious moral wrong and constitutes a criminal offence in many jurisdictions. Beyond that, the moral and legal condemnation of many types of assault and battery can be reversed or mitigated by the victim’s consent.
