![[ Return to APA Home Page ]](../../../../pix/new.gif)
Guidelines for Submissions
APA NEWSLETTERS
American
Indians
Viola F. Cordova
&
Anne Waters, Co-Editors
Black Experience
Jesse Taylor, Editor
Philosophy
and Computers
Jon Dorbolo, Editor
Feminism
and Philosophy
Joan Callahan,
Editor
Hispanic/Latino
Issues in
Philosophy
Eduardo Mendieta,
Editor
Philosophy
and Law
Richard Nunan,
Editor
Philosophy
and Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual
and
Transgender
Issues
Timothy Murphy,
Editor
Philosophy
and Medicine
Rosamond Rhodes,
Editor
Teaching
Philosophy
Tziporah Kasachkoff
&
Eugene Kelly,
Co-Editors
Navigation
Newsletters
Index (00:2)
apaOnline
Home Page
|
APA
Newsletters
Spring 2001
Volume 00, Number 2
Newsletter
on Philosophy and Law
Recent Law Review Articles of Interest
Abstracts
Previous
Article | Index | Next Article
FORUM
ON THE LAW OF RAPE: "What is Consent? And is it Important?"
Wertheimer,
Alan
3 Buffalo Criminal Law Review 557-583 (2000).
In "What is consent? And is it important?"
Alan Wertheimer argues that the question "What is consent?"
is much less important than many theorists have assumed. He argues
that it is a mistake to think that by spelling out the meaning of
consent we will have resolved the moral and legal issues about the
permissibility of the activity. Resolving the moral and legal permissibility
turns on substantive moral arguments and cannot be understood in
value-neutral, empirical terms that would come with an analysis
of the "meaning" of consent. Understanding when consent
is valid turns on normative arguments. Wertheimer argues for a moralized
theory of consent that is both objective and non-empirical. The
sense in which his theory of consent is objective is that it is
not "derived from the parties' subjective beliefs or their
psychological states." It is non-empirical in that it requires
making moral judgments. The criteria regarding when consent is valid,
he refers to as the principles of consent. Determining what are
the principles of consent will rest on the "best account of
morality for the various spheres in which we are interested-moral,
institutional, and legal." Wertheimer argues that our moral
theorizing will reflect the "costs" and "benefits"
of interpreting those principles in particular ways. So that, for
example, requiring that consent approximate some ideal of fully
informed, unpressured consent, might undermine the ability of agents
in particular types of circumstances to effect morally transformative
consent. Wertheimer plays out the implications of his analysis with
respect to intoxicated consent.
Previous
Article | Index | Next Article
|