1. The following is not a history of the legal doctrine of informed consent. At most it identifies major themes in its development. For a detailed history of legal developments regarding informed consent, the reader is directed to A History and Theory of Informed Consent by Ruth Faden and Tom Beauchamp, 1986. See also: Katz, 1984.
2. The use of the term “self-determination” may be questioned here, as it does not appear in the early cases. I concur with Faden and Beauchamp’s argument that this contemporary term best captures the sense of much of the early language of the courts in this regard (Faden and Beauchamp, 1986, p.121ff). Mohr v. Williams, for example, speaks of the “free citizen’s first and greatest right…the right to himself’ and expresses its concern about ”violating without permission the bodily integrity of the patient…without his knowledge or consent“ [95 Minn. 261, 104 N.W. 12 (1905)]. The landmark Schloendorff case states: ”every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body“ (211 N.Y. 128, 105 N.E. 93 (1914)].
3. An early use of the appeal to the right to privacy is found in the Quinlan decision, a principle later applied in Roe v. Wade regarding abortion. See Faden and Beauchamp, 1986, p. 39ff.
4. See previous endnote #2 in this regard.
5. For a particularly detailed and forceful presentation of this view, see Katz, 1984, pp. 48–84.