Consent and Normativity

First paragraph: It is nearly universally accepted, by philosophers and common opinion alike, that the giving and receiving of valid consent is normatively transformative: A’s validly consenting to B’s φ-ing changes the normative situation from its being impermissible for B to φ before A consents to its being permissible for B to φ after A has consented. The idea that consent has this normatively transformative power is prominent in bioethics and in the ethics of health-care more generally (including biomedical and psychological research) and it also plays a central role in discussions of sexual ethics and in various areas of political and legal theory