Presumed consent in criminal law

Abstract

Unlike the actual consent of the victim, which is in Serbian literature considered as a ground for excluding unlawfulness of a crime, in our textbooks of criminal law presumed consent is not usually considered as an independent ground of justification. This institute is based on the hypothetical will of the victim, on the idea that in some cases, although the holder of the good didn’t actually consent, act which endangers some of his goods does not deserve to be considered a crime, either because it appears to be in the holder’s interest, or because it represents an insignificant value to the holder. The requirement is that the perpetrator could have expected that the holder of the good, if asked, would consent. Presumed consent is common in the field of medical treatment, where an unconscious patient is often in dire need of immediate medical intervention. Contrary to the prevailing theory, the author argues that the presumed consent does not deserve its own place in the structure of crime, given its overlap with the institute of necessity.