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Principles Of Contracts For Governing Services, Tom Bell
Principles Of Contracts For Governing Services, Tom Bell
Tom W. Bell
The state provides governance services within a specified territory, demanding payment in the form of taxes, regulations, and compulsory service. Some citizens expressly consent to that bargain, as when the President of the United States swears to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. With regard to many of its subjects, however, the state can claim no more than hypothetical consent, leaving its use of force only weakly justified. Governing services provided under contract, founded in express consent, enjoy a more justified relationship with their citizen-customers. Private institutions already provide the same legal services as the state, offering rules, dispute resolution, …
Graduated Consent In Contract And Tort Law: Toward A Theory Of Justification, Tom Bell
Graduated Consent In Contract And Tort Law: Toward A Theory Of Justification, Tom Bell
Tom W. Bell
We often speak of consent in binary terms, boiling it down to 'yes' or 'no.' In truth, however, consent varies by degrees. We tend to afford expressly consensual transactions more respect than transactions backed by only implied consent, for instance, which we in turn regard as more meaningful than transactions justified by merely hypothetical consent. A mirror of that ordinal ranking appears in our judgments about unconsensual transactions, too. Those gradations of consent mark a deep structure of our social world, one especially evident in the contours of contract and tort law. This article draws on those and other sources …
The Scale Of Consent, Tom Bell
The Scale Of Consent, Tom Bell
Tom W. Bell
We often speak of consent in binary terms, boiling it down to "yes" or "no." In practice, however, consent varies by degrees. We tend to afford expressly consensual transactions more respect than transactions backed by only implied consent, for instance, which we in turn regard as more meaningful than transactions justified by merely hypothetical consent. A mirror of that ordinal ranking appears in our judgments about unconsensual transactions. This working paper reviews how legal and other authorities regard consent, revealing that they treat consent as a matter of degree and a measure of justification. The scale described here plays a …
Graduated Consent Theory, Explained And Applied, Tom W. Bell
Graduated Consent Theory, Explained And Applied, Tom W. Bell
Tom W. Bell
We often speak of consent in binary terms, boiling it down to "yes" or "no." In practice, however, consent varies by degrees. We tend to afford expressly consensual transactions more respect than transactions backed by only implied consent, for instance, which we in turn regard as more meaningful than transactions justified by merely hypothetical consent. A mirror of that ordinal ranking appears in our judgments about unconsensual transactions. This article reviews how a wide range of authorities regard consent, discovering that they treat consent as a matter of degree and a measure of justification. By abstracting from that evidence, we …