“Consent, Coercion, Reasonableness, and Collective Responsibility: The Option‑Set Structure of Legal Agency”

Legal doctrine treats consent, coercion, reasonableness, and collective responsibility as separate categories, each with its own tests and vocabulary. This paper argues that these doctrines are unified by an underlying structure the law has never articulated: the option‑set, the field of actions meaningfully available to an actor at the moment of decision. Drawing on Relational Structuralism (RS), the paper defines the option‑set as a relational construct shaped by social, institutional, and contextual forces. It shows that consent corresponds to an open option‑set, coercion to a collapsed one, reasonableness to an external reconstruction of the option‑set, and collective responsibility to a synchronized option‑set shared across individuals. By making this structure explicit, the paper explains longstanding doctrinal inconsistencies and offers a coherent framework for evaluating agency without altering existing legal categories.