theory of social contract, classically based on the consent of the governed, should be modified. Instead of arguing for explicit consent, which can always be manufactured, Pettit argues that the absence of an effective rebellion against it is a contract's only legitimacy. Application Elections Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that societal laws are upheld up the collective will of the citizens whom they represent. Thus, in obeying laws, the citizen "remains free." Within elections, the will of the establishment is the will of the collective. Barring corruption, the legitimacy of the democractic government is absolute. According to other social contract theorists, when the government fails to secure their natural rights (Locke) or satisfy the best interests of society, citizens can withdraw their obligation to obey or change the leadership through elections or other means including, when necessary, violence. Locke believed that natural rights were inalienable, and therefore the rule of God superseded government authority, while Rousseau believed that democracy (majority-rule) was the best way to ensure welfare while maintaining individual freedom under the rule of law. The Lockean concept of the social contract was invoked in the United States Declaration of Independence. Courtroom In court, the social contract is used to diagnose mental health, with the ultimate aim of delivering a fair sentence. Judge John Geoffrey Jones called it "an aspect of the instinct for self-preservation." He saw the committer of bad deeds as the impervious person: that "rare person whose intuition is stunted and who misses out on instruction grows up uninhibited, so continues bad deeds." Jones argued that the legitimancy of the judiciary is not absolute. Rather than the court, it is the psychiatrist's job to diagnose mental health. Criticism Consent of the governed An early critic of social contract theory was Rousseau's friend, the philosopher David Hume, who in 1742 published an essay "Of Civil Liberty". The second part of this essay, entitled "Of the Original Contract", stresses that the concept of a "social contract" is a convenient fiction: Hume argued that consent of the governed was the ideal foundation on which a government should rest, but that it had not actually occurred this way in general. Natural law and constitutionalism Legal scholar Randy Barnett has argued that, while presence in the territory of a society may be necessary for consent, this does not constitute consent to all rules the society might make regardless of their content. A second