Autonomy, criminal responsibility, and competence.

Recently, Juth and Lorentzon proposed to replace the concept of free will, as considered relevant in criminal responsibility, with the concept of autonomy. In addition, they conceived of the assessment of criminal responsibility in terms of a decision-making process. In this article, I suggest that, based on these characterizations, there is an essential similarity between assessments of criminal responsibility and assessments of competent decision-making within the context of informed consent. In both assessments, autonomy and decision-making would be central factors. If one accepts this basic similarity, I argue, interesting opportunities are opened up in the sense that research on criminal responsibility could be directly informed by research on competent decision-making.