Micah Tillman

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So, you’re driving along a road late at night and are pulled over by a police person who says you’ve violated the township’s “no blondes” rule.

(Do they have “townships” in your neck of the woods?  My family and I thought the word “township” was utterly laughable when we first encountered the term upon moving to Pennsylvania.)

You didn’t know there was a “no blondes” rule, you respond.

Doesn’t matter, says the police person, by entering the township you consented to all the township’s laws.

You’re thrown in jail and fed on bread and water for the rest of your life, all because you foolishly consented to the decisions made by the township’s “Council of Elders,” without even knowing it.

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Now, from last time, you might suspect that I would disagree with the police person’s use of the word “consent.”  To consent to something, I argued, you have to be aware of it, and then purposefully (at least at some low level) allow it.

Nevertheless, the police person is right that consent is something passive.  It is an allowing-something-to-happen (e.g., allowing someone else to take some action, or someone else to make some decision), not a making-something-happen.

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Then, Jeff offered the helpful distinction between “consenting to” and “giving consent to.”

(Why are you so worried about words? you might ask. Isn’t this all just semantics?  No, I respond.  I’m worried about how people live and act.  I’m trying to understand the living and acting that the word “consent” points us to.  We’re getting at something through the word, and people have built entire countries [e.g., the USA] on it.  Therefore, I want to figure out what real-world phenomenon/phenomena we’re referring to through it.)

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We mean by “giving your consent to someone” something much more active than what we mean by “consenting to something.”

The other person is still the initiator of the action or decision to which you are consenting, but you are not merely like a judge saying, “I’ll allow it.”

To give consent is more like acquiescing or capitulating, but without the sense that you regret what you’re giving-in-to.

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To give consent to someone regarding something, you have to have the power/authority to stop it.  Without your “approval,” whatever “it” is couldn’t happen.

In constrast, the fact that I consent to the laws of my city makes no difference in whether they get “enforced on” me.

I can withdraw my consent to the laws against theft and defacing property, but the police are still not going to let me get away with shoplifting or vandalism.

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Also, Jeff pointed out that people seem to use the phrase, “I had no choice” in two different ways.  But I’ll get to that next time.

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Tags: Consent, Law, Laws