ABSTRACT
The ambit of legally valid consent in extant law is contestable and opaque. A number of juridical precepts affi rm that a freely given and suffi ciently informed consent by a victim will preclude a defendant from inculpation; but counterfactually there are a distinct spectra of cases where consent is legally irrelevant. It is diffi cult to chart a via media between these juxtapositions. Moreover, concerns related to individual autonomy and state paternalism are often in confl ict. Consent engenders a perspective that the autonomy of the other person is involved, and that if that person consents to the conduct there should be no offence. However, we can also identify an attitude of paternalism that is primordial in a number of leading judgments: the proposition that the criminal law should be used to protect persons from themselves. Legal moralism can also be adduced in that where conduct per se is viewed as immoral then the stigmatisation of legal censure is presumptively justifi ed; wholly outwith the consensual nature of the act itself. Consent has developed in the UK in this regard in a solipsistic ad hoc manner, and haphazardly rather than in a coherent structure.
