Voluntariness is a legal and philosophical concept referring to a choice being made of a person's
free will, as opposed to being made as the result of
coercion or
duress. Philosophies such as
libertarianism and
voluntaryism, as well as many legal systems, hold that a contract must be voluntarily agreed to by a party in order to be binding on that party. The
social contract rests on the concept of the voluntary
consent of the governed.