Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich published an essay titled “Consentability, Autonomy, and Self-Actualization,” in the Loyola Law Review.  This issue is devoted to a collection of invited essays responding to Professor Nancy S. Kim’s book, “Consentability: Consent and Its Limits,” recently published by Cambridge University Press.  Other invited authors include Brian H. Bix (University of Minnesota), Philip J. Cook (Stanford University), and Kimberly D. Krawiec (Duke University), among others.

Professor Witmer-Rich’s essay evaluates several competing principles underlying consent, such as self-interest, self-sovereignty, and self-actualization.  He argues that the nature of consent depends heavily on which of these underlying values consent is believed to serve.  He concludes that “self-actualization–the ongoing human project of creating and embodying coherent and meaningful values and choices–is the most fundamental good of autonomy and is the good that society should seek to further in the law of consent.”