ABSTRACT
Consent is everywhere. It regulates our relationships with social and political institutions, with one another, and even with our own bodies. The wide variety of issues that consent is assigned to adjudicate suggests that it likely means (and does) different things in different contexts. This stands in stark contrast to the ‘common sense’ claim that is often made about consent – that it is, and has always been, about autonomy. But has it? Has consent ever had other meanings or functions? What is achieved when the meaning of consent is positioned as a matter of ‘common sense’? This chapter provides an introduction to these inquiries, setting the stage for the book’s investigations into the role of consent (in criminal law’s regulation of bodily harm and medical law’s doctrine of informed consent) in contexts that differ from its contemporary story of autonomy. The chapter concludes by describing the book’s upcoming examinations of sexual offence regulation in ancient Greece, medical ethics in the Middle Ages, and consent to bodily harm on the present-day sports field, noting that this rich history of consent may have implications for its operations in law today.
