 David Owens (2006, 2008, 2011, 2012), in a recent and widely influential approach, proposes a power based in what he calls our “authority interest”, or the interest we have in having a certain practical authority over others, the authority that being the recipient of a promise gives us. This power is one of a family of such powers, whose purpose is to serve our interest in being able to shape the normative landscape by declaration, an interest that takes at least two forms: the authority interest, which underwrites promissory obligation and the permissive interest that underwrites the power of consent: