The theme of this doctoral thesis is consent as a ground for freedom from criminal responsibility in Swedish criminal law. Consent has long been considered to exclude responsibility for many of the offences against the person, but has gained little attention in contemporary legal research. The central aim of the thesis is to analyse under which circumstances and for which reasons consent leads to freedom from criminal responsibility. The thesis is written using a legal dogmatic method. 

There are three prerequisites that need to be fulfilled in order for consent to lead to freedom from criminal responsibility. First, the type of offence must be motivated by an interest that the individual has command to dispose of. Second, the token consent in the individual case must be valid. Third, the deed performed with valid consent must (at least in relation to some offence types) be defensible. The thesis is structured accordingly and divided into three substantial parts: command; validity; defensibility.  

The part command contains an introduction to the concept of a legally protected interest as well as an account of the interests that the individual has command to dispose of. These interests motivate the offence types that together make up the area of relevance for consent. It is argued that almost all offences against the person are such that the individual may dispose of it by consenting to a deed that would otherwise harm the interest. One clear exception is offences that are motivated by freedom from oppression, to which consent from an individual is always irrelevant. The part validity contains an introduction to the ends of stipulating demands of validity, an analysis of the legal concept of consent and the scope of consent as well as an account of the demands of validity, which are: the form and expression of consent, the temporal aspect of consent, the consenting actor and the situation in which consent is given. It is argued that the central tenet of the demands of validity is that the individual is freely waiving the interest in question. The part defensibility contains an introduction to when and why a demand of defensibility is set, an account of the components to be considered in the assessment of defensibility as well as of the concrete aspects of that assessment. It is argued that the demand of defensibility can be considered as the state’s remaining claim of punishment, notwithstanding the valid consent.