Essay on John Locke on Tacit and Unintended Consent

In his Second Treatise on Law and Government, John Locke outlines clear and coherent standards for what constitutes a legitimate government and what persons one such government would have authority over. Both are determined by citizens acts of consenting to relinquish to the government part of their natural authority over their own conduct. Unfortunately, the situation becomes much less clear once we consider how his standards would apply to the political situation existing in the real world today. If we continue to subscribe to Lockes account without altering its standards, we would see a precipitous drop in the number of people whose interests existing governments are responsible for serving. In this paper I will show that with†¦show more content†¦Someone merely travelling on a public road through a country will have less contact with the civil society of that area and so fewer laws of that society will have application to her behavior. Still, those laws that do cover wha t activities she carries out have binding force on her (II, 120-121). These people incur the obligation to submit to local authority because that authority is protecting them, perhaps by preventing the citizens of the area from acting in ways that would harm other people including the outsider. For the outsider to be free of those restraints and take advantage of the areas citizens would be unjust; therefore she is obligated to comply with the legal restraints observed by citizens the area. In neither of these cases would the person in question be considered a member of the civil society whose laws she is obeying unless she expressly consented to join that society in addition to her tacit consent to follow its laws. An immediate criticism of Lockes account thus far is that in practice, hardly anyone expressly gives consent to join any civil society. Even in most real-world cases where a person does announce submission to a particular government, the declaration would not meet Lockes conditions of consent that would give legitimacy to the rule of government over thatShow MoreRelatedOrganisational Theory230255 Words   |  922 Pages. Organization Theory Challenges and Perspectives John McAuley, Joanne Duberley and Phil Johnson . This book is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive and reliable guide to organisational theory currently available. What is needed is a text that will give a good idea of the breadth and complexity of this important subject, and this is precisely what McAuley, Duberley and Johnson have provided. They have done some sterling service in bringing together the very diverse strands of workRead MoreLibrary Management204752 Words   |  820 Pages2007007922 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright  © 2007 by Robert D. Stueart and Barbara B. Moran All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007007922 ISBN: 978–1–59158–408–7 978–1–59158–406–3 (pbk.) First published in 2007 Libraries Unlimited, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 A Member of the Greenwood Pu blishing Group, Inc