“Consent” is an indispensable legal and moral concept, but why? Check out Larry Solum’s excellent legal theory blog post on the legal and moral significance of consent. (Professor Solum’s post popped up recently on my Twitter feed. For periodic legal theory updates, follow @lsolum on Twitter.) Without further ado, here is an excerpt from Professor Solum’s helpful overview of consent theory: “In general, there are two families of theories about the nature of consent. One theory is that consent is a mental state—either an affective state such as desire or a volitional state such as choice. The second theory is that consent is a performative—a speech act in which one person agrees to something by communicating with another person (or persons). Each of these two approaches to consent requires some additional explanation.” Read more here.