 Although Locke emphasises consent, consent is not, however, sufficient for legitimate authority because an authority that suspends the natural law is necessarily illegitimate (e.g. Simmons 1976). On some interpretations of Locke (e.g. Pitkin 1965), consent is not even necessary for legitimate political authority; it is only a marker of illegitimacy. Whether an actual political regime respects the constraints of the natural law is thus at least one factor that determines its legitimacy.