[Consent: between legality and legitimacy or between "formal" and "informed" consent]

As shown by a recent decree of the supreme court, the legal aspect of information given before consent is more and more important. At beginning, the written consent was reserved to particular cases, as biomedical research for example. It concerns now all the fields of care, since it is considered as a proof of the existence of a prior information. The informed consent changes in a formal consent: the consequence is a modification of the relation between the physician and the patient. We may imagine that this evolution paradoxically results in a worse integration of subjectivity. Then, it seems necessary to stress the clinical aspect so as to give to the consent concept its legitimity back: it consists in an ethical and humanistic acknowledgement of alterity.