Denis Bailey has posted Consent, Coercion, Reasonableness, and Collective Responsibility: The Option-Set Structure of Legal Agency on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Legal doctrine treats consent, coercion, reasonableness, and collective responsibility as distinct analytical categories, each with its own tests, thresholds, and exceptions. Yet across criminal law, torts, contracts, and constitutional adjudication, these doctrines all attempt to answer the same unarticulated question: what was the range of meaningful options available to the actor at the moment of decision? This paper argues that modern law lacks a structural model of agency because it has never formalized this underlying concept. Drawing on Relational Structuralism (RS), I introduce the option-set as the foundational unit of analysis-the dynamic, relationally-shaped field of actions an individual can realistically take within a given context. When the option-set expands, we call the result consent; when it collapses under pressure, we call it coercion; when we evaluate it from the outside, we call it reasonableness; and when it becomes synchronized across individuals, we call it collective responsibility. These doctrines are not separate. They are four surface manifestations of a single structural phenomenon: the deformation of the option-set by relational forces. By making this architecture explicit, RS reveals the hidden unity beneath some of law’s most important concepts and offers a coherent framework for resolving long-standing doctrinal inconsistencies. The option-set is not a new doctrine; it is the structure the doctrines have been circling without naming.
Very interesting and recommended.