ABSTRACT
The principle of consent holds that political membership can result only from free individual choices. Locke reveals most of the attractions and limits of the consent principle. Its attractions are considerable: indeed, leading contemporary writers on citizenship and international law insist even more strongly than Lockean Enlightenment and public law writers did that only consent is an appropriate basis political membership. In the context of consensual citizenship the requirement of mutuality may seem to render individual consent hollow in practice because those to whom a state refuses consent may have no practical option to go elsewhere. The consensual principle in its purest form is literally anarchical, jeopardizing all memberships and allegiances. The government of a more truly consensual polity could more truthfully proclaim to citizens, resident aliens, and illegal aliens alike that American citizenship stands on a firm foundation of freely willed membership.
