ABSTRACT
Consent theory has, for centuries, been offered by one or another political theorist as the basis, in democratic, “social contract” nations like the United States, for a perilous and often disagreeable “public duty”—military service. 1 Thomas Jefferson certainly acknowledged the theory in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed. …”In exchange for their role in the formulation of the government and its policies and their ultimate control over it through the power of the ballot, citizens of a free state are understood to have consented to obey its laws and to go to its aid in time of peril.
