Stephen Macedo

version 10 18 10 aft
Politics Department and the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University
On leave 2010-11, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University
macedo@princeton.edu

Why Public Reason?

Citizens Reasons and the Constitution of the Public Sphere 1
Draft: comments and suggestions very welcome! -- sm

I. Introduction
One of the great successes of liberal democratic political communities has been in
establishing peaceful relations among religiously diverse citizens based on norms of
equal liberty for citizens and even-handedness among religions. Nevertheless, sharp
controversies remain, including those concerning the appropriateness of religious speech
and argument in politics. As developed and refined by John Rawls, and others the idea of
public reason holds that those advocating laws and policies that touch on basic
constitutional principles ought to offer adequate supporting reasons that could be shared
by all reasonable members of the political community. Critics of this vision are legion.
Many argue that it excludes religious citizens from full participation in democratic life by
inhibiting their self-expression on vital political questions. In a deeply religious and
pluralistic society the proposed norm seems unlikely to be accepted. If it does gain
currency, it might result only in public concealment of peoples true reasons. When
dissenting voices are not heard, regardless of the mode of expression, public deliberation
is deprived of vital information about what citizens think, and possible insight into the
merits of public questions, degrading the quality and robustness of public deliberation.
The proposal also appears to be a fertile source of resentment and conflict.
The criticisms are powerful and, aside from their intrinsic merits, their vehemence
will give the most stalwart Rawlsian pause. Whats more, the debate often seems
tangential to substantive questions of justice and rights. Is public reason worth the
trouble that it generates? What exactly is at stake?

I have benefitted from comments of Ryan Davis, Gerald Gaus, Alex Levitov; an APSA panel discussion
with Simone Chambers, Benjamin Hertzberg, Nicholas Troester, Kevin Vallier (who also provided
extensive written comments), and Paul Weithman; a Friday Group discussion at CASBS with Gillian
Hadfield, Victoria McGeer, Philip Pettit, and Daniel Posner; and the two anonymous reviewers.

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1664085

Against the critics, I argue that important political values support the idea and
ideal of public reason. When officials and citizens try to articulate reasons that all can
share we help assure one another of our equal standing, promote cooperation on fair
terms, and help institutionalization our public morality. The mutual moral assurance of
the practice of public reason should matter especially to the political communitys most
vulnerable members. Contrary to the critics, public reason is a central and consequential
virtue of citizenship in a diverse constitutional democracy.

II. The Rawlsian Ideal

The practice of public reason is part and parcel of the ideal of a well-ordered
society: one that is effectively regulated by a public conception of justice, and in which,
as Rawls puts it, everyone accepts and knows that others accept the same principles of
justice, in which basic social institutions generally satisfy and are generally known to
satisfy these principles, and in which most politically active citizens have a normally
effective sense of justice. 2 Charles Larmore nicely captures the core idea: The
conception of justice by which we live is then a conception we endorse, not for different
reasons we may each discover, and not simply for reasons we happen to share, but
instead for reasons that count for us because we can affirm them together. This spirit of
reciprocity is the foundation of a democratic society. 3
In a democratic society, political power ultimately belongs to citizens acting
jointly, it is the power of the public, that is, of free and equal citizens as a collective
body. 4 Those who exercise political power, including citizens, face a substantial burden
of mutual justification because laws and political institutions shape our life prospects
deeply and pervasively, and states may resort to awesome coercive powers. The moral
hope of what has been called justificatory liberalism 5 is that insofar as we can articulate
mutually acceptable principles and approximate their realization in practice we can then
sincerely say to one another that the institutions under which we live, and which help
define our fundamental rights, liberties, opportunities and rewards, are not the results of
2

Theory of Justice, rev. ed., 4.

Emphasis added, Larmore, Public Reason, 368.
4
PL 216.
5
See Gerald A. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism as will become clear, my conception departs from Gauss.
3

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1664085

blind social forces or mere power but rather are regulated by us collectively in
accordance with our equal moral standing. Principles of social justice answer to the
demands of mutual justification among citizens conceived as free and equal. 6 Rawls
expresses this thought in terms of his liberal principle of legitimacy:
our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in
accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free
and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles
and ideals acceptable to them as reasonable and rational [or, elsewhere,
acceptable to their common human reason PL 137]. [T]he duty of
civility imposes a moral, not a legal dutythe duty of civilityto be able
to explain to one another on those fundamental questions how the
principles and policies they advocate can be supported by the political
values of public reason. This duty also involves a willingness to listen to
others and a fairmindedness in deciding when accommodations to their
views should reasonably be made. 7
Rawlss innovation is to reconcile our long recognized justificatory problem with
what he calls the fact of reasonable pluralism. Our reasonable fellow citizens differ
irreconcilably with respect to their different religious and philosophical doctrines,
including many of their beliefs about what is true on long disputed questions of faith and
philosophy, metaphysics and the ultimate meaning of life; what Rawls calls their
comprehensive conceptions. 8 In spite of their disagreements, citizens may nevertheless
converge on certain public reasons and principles of political morality as acceptable from
all reasonable points of view. The raw materials are ideas and convictions with
widespread currency in their public culture suitably interpreted.
While it would be too much to expect everyone to converge on the best justified
public conception of justice such as Rawlss two principles we might expect all or
most to converge on one or another among a family of reasonable liberal democratic
conceptions. Reasonable political conceptions of justice have three general features: an
account of basic rights, liberties, and opportunities, an assignment of special priority to
these rights, liberties and opportunities, and finally, the provision of at least a safety net
and other forms of social provision so that everyone can make effective use of their
6

I explore the centrality of mutual justification to liberal democratic constitutionalism and its place in
defining the virtues of liberal citizens and public officials in Liberal Virtues.
7
John Rawls, Political Liberalism 217.
8
And see Political Liberalism (1996) xlv- lii.

liberties and opportunities, especially their political liberties. 9 Insofar as contending

parties for office espouse one or another among the family of reasonable liberal
democratic conceptions politics will be legitimate.
The primary subject of justice is the basic structure of a polity: the background
institutions within which we act and choose, which include the system of property and
market exchanges, incomes and inheritance taxation, family law and the law of
associations, and public systems of education, healthcare, and social provision. We seek
principles for the design of these institutions that all citizens, regarded as free and equal,
could freely accept with full information and under fair conditions. And so, in deriving
his favored conception of justice as fairness, Rawls argues that we must aside claims to
be advantaged in the design of institutions based on morally arbitrary differences and
accidents of fate, including the good fortune of being born into a well-off family or with a
superior genetic endowment. 10 And because we want the principles to be freely
acceptable and fair to our reasonable fellow citizens who have differing religious
conceptions and conceptions of the good life, we also put aside knowledge of our
particular beliefs about these matters.
Rawls argues that two principles would (and should) be chosen under fair
conditions: giving priority to a list of basic liberties, promoting fair equality of
opportunity, and requiring that further inequalities tend toward the greatest benefit of the
least advantaged members of society. 11 The particular formulation is less important

9
See Political Liberalism, 6; and also see lv, 226. Extremely important with respect to the third prong is the
provision of educational opportunities, and the regulation of the role of money in politics, sufficient to
bring about a genuinely deliberative and democratic politics, see the Law of Peoples, p. 50. I have
benefited from Samuel Freemans discussion, of this and other issues, in his Justice and the Social
Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy (New York: Oxford University press, 2007).
10
We should regard these advantages as arbitrary from the point of view of social justice, in that we do not
seek to design societies basic political and economic institutions on the foundation of a principle of reward
for superior intrinsic merit.
11
The first guarantees everyone a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, including
familiar freedoms of religion, association, expression, and privacy. The second insisting that Social and
economic inequalities satisfy two conditions: (a) They are to be attached to positions and offices open to
all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and (b), they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least
advantaged members of society. Principle 2 (b) is referred to as the difference principle. Which reflects
the judgment that "the social order is not to establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those
better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate." Theory of Justice (1971), p. 75.

here than the larger project: to discern principles that would render political institutions
acceptable to all on reflection, including those who do least well by their operation. 12
Reasonableness and reciprocity are constitutive public virtues of liberal
citizenship: they express our commitment to play our part along with our fellows in
fashioning and supporting a genuine public morality, one that we can all embrace
together on grounds we can share. Reasonable persons, as Rawls puts it, desire for its
own sake a social world in which they, as free and equal, can cooperate with others on
terms all can accept. They insist that reciprocity should hold within that world so that
each can benefit along with others. 13 One aspect of reasonableness is recognizing the
burdens of judgment: because many matters of faith and philosophy are subject to
longstanding controversy reasonable citizens will continue to disagree reasonably about
them. It is unreasonable to impose coercive laws on ones fellows when the only
justification resides in ones particular (and necessarily sectarian) comprehensive
religious or philosophical doctrine (be it Protestant, Kantian, Emersonain, or what have
you). A second, related aspect of reasonableness is reciprocity: the determination to seek
fair terms of social cooperation, that each participant may reasonably accept, provided
that everyone else likewise accepts them; terms that our fellow citizens may reasonably
be expected to endorse along with us when regarded from a position that is fully
informed and fair (that is, not amenable to being manipulated for unfair self-advantage). 14
These virtues help constitute a distinctive ideal of social life: a well-ordered
society in which it is common knowledge that all (or nearly all) are moved to act in
politics in accordance with a reasonable conception of justice. The criterion of
reciprocity as expressed in public reason, says Rawls, offers some hope of realizing
12

It misses the point to suggest that Rawls opts for the difference principle because he ascribes risk
aversion to those behind the veil of ignorance (who then pursue a strategy of maximizing the minimum
expected payoff), see Justice as Fairness, sect. 31. The point rather is that it is asking too much of those
who find themselves at the bottom of a system of unequal social rewards to tell them that their relative
disadvantage is the price that must be paid for the even greater advantages for others, Rawls, Theory of
Justice, p. 180, and see section 29 generally. The difference principle allows for inequalities of reward and
incentives for the sake of efficiency while nevertheless affirming that the more advantaged are not to be
better off at any point to the detriment of the less well off. Justice as Fairness, 124.
13
Political Liberalism, 50.
14
Political Liberalism, 16, 226. The virtue of reciprocity is exhibited by the conviction that our exercise
of political power is proper only when we sincerely believe that the reasons we offer for our political action
may reasonably be accepted by other citizens as a justification of those actions. Political Liberalism, xlvi;
see also PL 218, 226. This idea of reciprocity also plays a central role in the account of deliberative
democracy defended by Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, see Democracy and Disagreement.

social concord and civic friendship. 15 Here is a distinctive ideal of respect among
citizens: a solidarity of shared reasons.
So, discerning the substance of principles of justice is linked closely to thinking in
the right way about the justificatory project that faces us. Citizens are not deciding for
themselves only or the members of their group or sect. Institutions that govern all should
be based on principles that all should be able to endorse. It is important that the
reasoning for the principles should not be too complex, but rather available to citizens
generally; the guidelines of public reasoning should be appropriate to a democracy. We
also want our agreement to be robust in that supporting reasons have been tested critically
from all points of view. 16
Full realization of the ideal of a well-ordered society is not to be expected: Rawls
describes it as a point at infinity we can never reach, though we may get closer. 17 And
yet, even in non-ideal conditions such as our own, ideas and norms of public reason are
discernible in practice. The Supreme Court scrutinizes legislation for illicit attempts to
legislate sectarian goals, and in clear cases the justices join in unanimously striking down
laws aimed at, for example, the prohibition of animal sacrifice, absent concerns about
health or sanitation. 18 Public officials from James Madison to John Kennedy and Mario
Cuomo to Barack Obama have articulated and defended ideas related to public reason. 19
Of course, those advancing national political agendas are well-advised to make appeals
on inclusive grounds, citing broad-based reasons. In American conditions of diversity,
politicians typically disavow efforts to impose their religious views on others. The
profound and growing economic inequalities in our society mean that liberal justice
seems an ever more remote goal, but the practice of national politics is often (perhaps
even generally) conducted in the currency of what purport to be public reasons.
Philosophical defenders of a wide range of political and ethical views articulate ideas of

15

Justice as Fairness, 126, and see Political Liberalism, li.

PL 51, and see 49.
17
Reply to Habermas, Jrnl Phil 142 approx
18
For example, in the case involving a local ordinance prohibiting animal sacrifice, not even dressed up
as a matter of health regulation or the prevention of cruelty to animals, see The Church of the Lukumi
Babalu Ayi vs. City of Hialeah (CITE).
19
See Madisons Memorial and Remonstrance, kennedys speech to the Southern ministers; Mario Cuomo
Notre Dame speech, and Barack Obama speech on religion and politics. Discussed in XXXX As I have
argued elsewhere, see Liberal Virtues, and XXX; and Klemp and Macedo XXX;
16

public reason. 20 And while any ideal of public reason will be controversial, it seems to
me a worthy orienting goal.
Critics of public reason are, nevertheless, irked by the emphasis on shared
reasons. Why, Nicholas Woltersdorff asks, is not my conclusion the relevant thing
rather than my reason? 21 To see what is at stake let us turn to the critics.

II. Justificatory Politics Without a Public?

Critical writings on liberal public reason are vast and diverse, and include notable
works by Jeremy Waldron 22, Nicholas Woltersdorff, Christopher J. Eberle 23, Jeffrey L.
Stout 24, Gerald F. Gaus, and others. 25 I will not try to survey them all. A central thread
is the claim that citizens should be uninhibited in giving expression to their particular
conceptions of truth and value and, indeed, inviting such expression in all deliberative
settings makes for a better politics. Many critics of public reason deny that citizens are
under any general duty to offer shared public reasons when seeking the passage of laws
touching on matters of basic justice. 26
The critics typically join Rawls in emphasizing the importance of the fact of
reasonable pluralism: individual citizens have a wide plurality of differing and
incompatible comprehensive religious and philosophical belief systems. While Rawls
argues on that basis for the importance of abstracting away from our different viewpoints

20

See, for example, John Finnis, Stanford Encly of Philosophy [???], Thomas Aquinas account of human
positive law treats the central case of government as the self-government of a free people by the rulers and
institutions which that people has appointed for that purpose, and the central case of law is the coordination of willing subjects by law which, by its public character (promulgation), clarity, generality,
stability and practicability, treats those subjects as partners in public reason. [citation omitted] For he
defines law as universal (in the logicians sense of universal) practical propositions conceived in the
reason of the ruler(s) and communicated to the reason of the ruled so that the latter will treat those
propositions, at least presumptively, as reasons for actionreasons as decisive for each of them as if each
had conceived and adopted them by personal judgment and choice. Also, Robert Goodin, Utilitarianism
as a Public Philosophy, in XXXX
21
Woltersdorff in Audi and Wlotersdorff, 106..
22
Jeremy J. Waldron," Religious Contributions in Public Deliberation," 30 San Diego L. Rev. 817, 824
(1993); and Waldron, Public Reason and Justification in the Courtroom, Journal of Law, Philosophy
and Culture (Catholic University of America), Vol. 1, #1 (Spring 2007).
23
Christopher J. Eberle, Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002).
24
Jeffrey L. Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University press, 2004).
25
Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square, Stephen Carter, Culture of Disbelief See also the
controversy surrounding the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
26
There are important differences within this group which I explain below.

to a common or public point of view, the critics often reject that move, insisting on the
centrality (and validity) in justification of citizens varying particular comprehensive
viewpoints.
Gaus offers an especially clear and well developed alternative to Rawls, so lets
consider its basic contours. The lynchpin is what he calls the generic Public
Justification Principle, which says that L is a justified coercive law only if each and
every member of the public P has conclusive reason(s) R to accept L as a binding
requirement. 27 Gaus argues that standard versions of public reason put too much
emphasis on interpersonal justificationwhat beliefs can we justify to each other? as
opposed to personal justification, which begins with individual system[s] of beliefs
and how, within them, persons individually justify their beliefs. 28
Personal or non-public associational justificatory standpoints occupy center stage
for many critics. Citizens are under no duty or requirement of virtue to offer public
reasons that could be acceptable to all of their reasonable fellow citizens. It is sufficient
if laws secure the support of multiple justifications from each of the personal or partial
standpoints in the political community; there is no further need for citizens to offer shared
reasons. Gaus and Kevin Vallier thus reject what they call the error of consensus. 29
It is common ground among defenders and critics alike that public reasons occupy
an important but limited space. Citizens also have extra-political or personal convictions
concerning many matters which need not answer to standards of public justifiability:
particular religious or philosophical convictions may be justified by reference to the
wider views held by oneself and ones group, or they may be matters of faith. Gaus is
right in that sense to say that many of our moral beliefs that are personally justified are
not publicly justified. He also asserts that public justification is a far more strenuous

27

Gaus, Coercion, Ownership, and the Redistributive State, 53. On what conclusive means here, see
below, fn 31.
28
See Gerald F. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 10-12. Gaus quotes Stanley Benn to the effect that Within the
modern consciousness, practical reason is located in the first instance not in the mustering of arguments to
persuade or justify oneself to others but in the process of individual choice and judgment. Each persons
moral consciousness is something that he has to keep in reasonable shape. Benn, A Theory of Freedom,
19, 2, quoted in Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, 11.
29
Phil. & Soc. Crit., 52. Richard Arneson defends an account of rights and justification that is explicitly
asocial: it is important to be justified, but not to participate in public reason-giving and reasondemanding, [APSA Paper CITE].

test than personal justification, 30 because, on his view, laws touching on matters of basic
justice must jump a long series of hurdles formed by the comprehensive views of each
reasonable group of citizens. 31 Gaus and other critics seem to dispense with a stage of
justification where we abstract away from our comprehensive systems of belief in order
to frame the justificatory problem as a common, public problem. 32
Gaus further rejects what he calls the error of symmetry with respect to reasons
for supporting and reasons for rejecting proposed laws: citizens reasons to reject laws
need not be acceptable to others. 33 While ones own religious reasons are enough for the
religious citizen to reject a law (they can be defeaters), they are not enough to justify a
law. Laws will need to have many differing rationales, enough to supply all of the
citizens on whom law is imposed with conclusive reasons for the proposed law from
the standpoint each ones particular comprehensive standpoint. 34 Rejectability operates
from the personal standpoint and may be based on non-shared reasons: a proposed law is
not justified if I do not have conclusive reasons to support this law given my personal
reasonable beliefs and convictions. 35 This model of justification without a public
addresses everyone subject to the law, iteratively or serially, seeking conclusive reasons
for each group in light of their personal beliefs and convictions. We do not expect people
to abstract away from their particular comprehensive doctrines and consider the laws
30

Justificatory Liberalism, 11. The claim may not be true. Public justification differs from personal
justification more deeply than Gaus recognizes (it is not just serial personal justification), making any
general comparison impossible. In some ways public justification is subject to various (justified) practical
imperatives and constraints (of accessibility, avoidance of excessive complexity, etc.) which could make it
more tractable. Moreover, one might think that some features of public justice are fairly straightforward,
for example, the priority of basic liberties under favorable conditions. In contrast, central and basic
questions in personal life (does God exist? should I get married? Mac or PC?) may be very hard.
31
Per stage 2, below.
32
As Larmore puts it in his version of political liberalism, in Patterns of Moral Complexity.
33
Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier, The Roles of Religious Conviction in a Publicly Justified Polity: The
Implications of Convergence, Asymmetry, and Political Institutions, forthcoming in Philosophy and
Social Criticism.
34
What does conclusive mean here? It involves respecting the great variety of evaluative standards that
individuals apply in judging the desirability of law. If, exercising her capacities as a free and equal
person, Betty has concluded that, when compared to LB, LA is inadequately justified in the sense that it is
not choice-worthy; as she understands it, she has more reason to accept LB. For Alf (even if Alf is the head
of state) to simply impose LA on Betty is inconsistent with treating her as free and equal member of the
public. The question is does she have reason to endorse LA over the alternatives, or even over no law at
all. Coercion, 11-12.
35
I put reasonable in scare quote here because the term appears to have a subtly but importantly different
meaning for Gaus as compared Rawls. For Rawls the sense of the term as used in political liberalism is
restricted to the domain of the political; Im not sure that is the case for Gaus. For an interesting discussion
of Rawls see Brian Barry, John Rawls and the Search for Stability, Ethics 105 (July 1995): 874-915.

justification from a common point of view. Justification is addressed to citizens

individually and severally, as it were, there is significant stage or institutional setting
where justification is addressed to one representative viewpoint (such as the original
position) shared by all. 36
Other critics also emphasize the justificatory centrality of non-public (or
personal) belief systems. For some, public reason smells of stale epistemology.
Woltersdorff suspects that the Enlightenment understanding of how reason works is still
operative in Rawls. 37 Stout argues that people can be epistemically entitled on
account of their comprehensive religious or philosophical views to reject the quest for
a common justificatory basis. 38 [A]cculturation does, I think, often succeed in bringing
it about that particular groups of individuals are justified in believing things that their
neighbors either justifiably disbelieve or justifiably ignore. 39 Given Rawlss acceptance
of reasonable pluralism, says Stout, and its attendant permissive standard of
reasonableness, he is not entitled to regard as unreasonable those who reject the
contractarian project of seeking shared reasons; that project is morally unnecessary
and epistemologically dubious. 40
Like Gaus, Woltersdorff and Stout offer as an alternative to liberal public reason a
model of iterated dialogue: each of us can and should converse with other members of
our political community, improvising arguments in light of the totality of each others
beliefs. 41 Gaus speaks of complex networks of justificatory relations, as an alternative

36

Depending on what Gaus and Vallier mean, these claims may be wrong. Our fellow citizens are entitled
to judge whether our reasons for rejecting a proposed arrangement or law are reasonable: whether, for
example, the considerations we adduce seem sufficiently weighty, from the shared, public point of view. In
any reasonable interpretation of public reason, citizens are not awarded arbitrary veto rights based on their
non-public views. In taking seriously our public role as citizens we should recognize the urgency of
various public aims and tasks.
37
W in J&W, 98.
38
Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 67. Gaus, Stout and Woltersdorff are pre-occupied by the supposed
epistemological presuppositions of public reason, and Gaus criticizes Rawls and Larmore for leaving aside
the epistemological dimensions of justified belief in political liberalism (Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism, p.
4). Rawls doesnt leave these issues aside but rather puts them aside, and for good reason.
39
Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 177.
40
Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 71, and see 65-77 generally, and p. 177.
41
Consider Stouts remarks, Democracy and Tradition, 80: As the expressivist sees it, the series of
exchanges need not operate on a single common basis, tailored to all, but might well involve
improvisational expression of ones own point of view and ad hoc immanent criticism of ones
interlocutors. The expectation is that different improvisations and different immanent criticismsindeed
different vocabulariesmight well be called for in response to each interlocutor. The one thing upon

10

to the quest for a common point of view or a shared public moral framework of
thought. 42
*****
The critics do not agree on what substantive political implications follow from
rejecting Rawlsian public reason but there are common themes. 43
The view that I have been sketching seems to make common cause with those
diversitarian liberals such as John Tomasi 44 and William A. Galston 45 who place strong
emphasis on respect for pluralism and diversity, including the need to honor the
autonomy and integrity of traditionalist religious believers who reject the
Enlightenment values supposedly favored by political liberals. Woltersdorff, Stout,
Jeremy Waldron, and Christopher Eberle all share something like this concern. Tomasi
and Galston both argue for a third principle of justice: the idea that accommodations must
be carved out when laws or policies in effect (not intention or purpose) disadvantage or
impose differential costs on the practices of particular religious or ethical groups.
Galston calls this the principle of maximum feasible accommodation of diversity. 46
Note that whereas Tomasi and Galston call for a post-legislative stage to carve out
exceptions and accommodations to answer religiously-based complaints, Gaus and others
build in this solicitude for the perspectives of particular groups at a prior and deeper
level: the conception of justification informs the constitutional and legislative stages. 47
The emphasis on allowing citizens to argue for laws based only on their particular
comprehensive conceptions also recalls the arguments of those such as Michael J.
Sandel 48 and Seyla Benhabib 49 who argue for public deliberation as an exercise among
which a reasonable person can more or less count is the need to transcend whatever set of rules and
concepts a distinguished philosopher has described as demanded by our common use of reason.
42
Thus, these critics seem to bypass stage 1, explored below, to go directly to 2, hoping for a modified
version of 3.
43
See, for example,
44
Liberalism Beyond Justice: Citizens Society and the Boundaries of Political Theory (Princeton
University Press, 2001).
45
Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (Cambridge
University Press, 2002).
46
See Galston, Liberal Pluralism.
47
If I understand him properly.
48
Sandels advocacy of an encumbered conception of the self is in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice
(Cambridge U. Press, 1982). For Sandel, one major political vice of Rawlsian liberalism is that its central
thought experiment, the original position, represents us as unencumbered by particular conceptions of the
good, whether religious or philosophical. By excluding comprehensive religious and moral viewpoints

11

encumbered selves (as Sandel puts it) or concrete others (in Benhabibs phrase).
That is, political justification should engage subjects who draw freely on religious
conceptions or controversial ethical ideals, their entire conception of the good. 50 We
can understand each other to have reasons that are intelligible to one another as reasons,
even if we do not share the same reasons. 51
With respect to his tracing of political implications, Gaus is somewhat
idiosyncratic. He rejects the importance of deliberative political practices: what is
important is that, at the end of the day, laws are justified from the standpoint of each
citizens reasons, not that citizens or public officials participate in a politics that is
deliberative. 52 In addition, he champions a presumption of individual liberty which he
associates with the classical liberal tradition of John Locke and others. 53 Gaus assumes
from public deliberation, political liberalism issues in a thin form of political community when a thicker
form would be available if we dispensed with an exclusionary conception of public reason. Gaus
disagrees. He argues in effect that we lack any thicker account of shared goods, and if we admit persons
differing thicker accounts of the good (and moral, philosophical, and religious ideals more broadly) into
public justification we will see that we can agree on less than egalitarian liberals such as Rawls suppose,
not more. I risk caricaturing the various positions. Suffice it to say that Gaus seems to me quite plausible
in suggesting that revising public reason in the way I have described means that we would wind up with a
thinner politics than Rawls provides, not as Sandel would have it, a thicker politics. I believe Gaus is right.
Communitarians such as Sandel have often ignored the problem of disagreement, see my discussion in
Liberal Virtues, ch. 1. Equal basic liberties are protected because individuals should be free to differ and
explore alternatives, not because liberalism is committed to a thin theory of the self.
49
Benhabib, Situating the Self Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (New
York: Routledge, 1992).
50
Gaus does not use the phrases concrete other see or encumbered self, and I should emphasize that
Sandel reject the abstractness of Rawlss thought experiment in different ways, see Rawls, A Theory of
Justice, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Harvard 1999).
51
Gaus recognizes, of course, that in order to make any sort of social choice scenario plausible, we need
some criteria for what constitutes a reasonable objection to proposed principles of justice or laws. So he
is willing to say that the subjects of justice whose views deserve respect in the project of justification are
those free from gross delusions and defects of reasoning, and those who do not have antipathy or contempt
for one another, see Gaus, Coercion 16. In effect, this helps specify the conditions under which Gauss
generic principle of justification operates. All citizens who satisfy these minimal criteria should be
considered reasonable on Gauss view. Reasonable persons, on this minimalist model, are concerned
to advance their own widely disparate conceptions of value, and are free to deploy all the reasons at their
disposal, in deciding to reject a law. There is no principled emphasis here on offering reasons for laws
touching on basic justice that all of ones reasonable fellow citizens can share.
52
Richard Arneson also argues that it is important to have reasons but not to give them in deliberative
settings; his view is frankly asocial, see his National Sovereignty as a Constraint on Global Justice,
paper presented at the 2008 APSA. Benhabib and Sandel would embrace rather than reject deliberative
practices, and they would reject the other libertarian moves described in this paragraph. I realize that I risk
confusion by associating these various critics with particular aspects of Gauss argument.
53
Gaus also mentions John Stuart Mill, Stanley Benn, Joel Feinberg, and Randy Barnette, The Structure of
Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (Oxford Univ. Press: 1998). Relatedly, Gaus argues that we need
unanimous consent to political institutions and their powers of the sort argued for by James M. Buchanan
and Gordon Tulloch: all citizens must be presented with conclusive reasons for constitutional

12

a normative baseline furnished by the presumption of liberty understood as noninterference. 54 The classical liberal tilt is not embraced by the other critics mentioned
above, all of whom prize democratic politics of one sort or another.
Perhaps the most common substantive complaint is that public reason
marginalizes or excludes religious people from politics. Woltersdorff, Waldron, Eberle,
Stout, Gaus, Galston and Tomasi all argue that public reason imposes unnecessary and
unhelpful inhibitions on religious speech. Waldron adds that this may inhibit the pursuit
of justice and truth by depriving the community of faith-based moral insights. 55 Many of
the critics think that public reason is a source of real antagonism. Stout argue that liberal
ideas of free public reason, independent of reliance on tradition contribute to a
Manichaean rhetoric of cultural warfare pitting liberal secular intellectuals against
religious traditionalists. 56 He seeks a more pragmatic middle civic ground where citizens
arrangements and legislation; see their Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional
Democracy (1962). Gaus also invokes Rawls, dubiously I think. Rawlss first principle of justice says that
each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which
scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, p. 42.
With respect to this principle and his overall view of justice Rawls says, that the basic liberties are
specified by a list is quite clear from Theory, Sect. 11: 61 (1st edition). No priority is assigned to liberty
as such, as if the exercise of something called `liberty had preeminent value and were the main, if not the
sole, end of political and social justice. While there is a general presumption against imposing legal and
other restrictions on conduct without sufficient reason, this presumption creates no special priority for any
particular liberty, Justice as Fairness, p. 44; see also 112-14.
54
He thinks that major liberal political thinkers Mill, Feinberg, Benn, and Rawls -- have operated based
on a presumption of liberty and that we are entitled to do so. see Coercion, 5. A crucial elements of
Gauss view is the Political Liberty Principle: 1. A citizen is under no standing moral obligation to justify
her actions to the state; 2. All use of force or coercion by the state against the persons of its citizens
requires justification; in the absence of such justification force or coercion by the state is unjust. So he
allows for a system of private property but regards expansive many public goods as problematic.
Gaus further argues that for a law to be acceptable to a member of the public, it must be a net
improvement on liberty: Consulting her own standards, each must hold that the law, in comparison to a
condition of liberty, brings more benefits than costs. If a condition of liberty no law at all would be
better given her evaluative standards, she has no reason to accept the law. Coercion, 16-17. Gauss
view is complex, but the classical liberal tilt is evident: It is important to stress that once a system of
strong property rights has been established, redistributive proposals are manifestly coercive. To take away
ones property infringes ones rights; the threat to do so is coercive. Coercion, 23.
This is quite different from the approach of the mature Rawls, for whom the scope and content of a
fully adequate scheme of basic liberties is specified by a list; [n]o priority is assigned to liberty as
such. PL 291. Rawls allows, of course, that we ought not to restrict peoples conduct by law without
sufficient reasons, but all political power requires the backing of reasons, and this creates no special
priority for any particular liberty (PL 292, and see generally PL Lecture VIII). An account of basic
liberties is itself a product of the justificatory enterprise. No general presumption of liberty as noninterference forms a prior baseline. And see Rawls, Political Liberalism, 393, it is unreasonable not to
allow for democratic procedures in the face of many controversies concerning taxation and public goods.
55
See his Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation???
56
Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 2, 10; see also 11-13.

13

address one another in light of the totality of one anothers beliefs. 57 Woltersdorff
similarly argues for respecting and engaging religious fellow citizens who strive for an
integrated existence in which their political convictions are the direct upshot of their
religious views. We should repudiate the quest for an independent source and impose
no moral restraint on the use of religious reasons. 58
So the commonest complaint about public reason seems to be the duty of
restraint when it comes to offering religious or other non-public comprehensive reasons
in support of proposed laws. 59 The critics converge as critics of the public-ness of liberal
public reason, and that seems to me significant.
*****
The foregoing may helps to reveal an important ambiguity in debate over public
reason and religion.
On the standard view of public reason the duty of civility applies when
approaching the point of decision for all in the public forum. There are many other
settings in social life and civil society--the wide public sphere--in which discussions of
politics and justice properly take place in terms of citizens differing religious and
philosophical convictions. Just laws typically have religious rationales which provide
many citizens with further justifying grounds. The ideal of a well-ordered society is
achieved when principles of justice secure the support of an overlapping consensus of
citizens religious and philosophical comprehensive conceptions. Moreover, it can be
extremely useful for citizens to explain their non-public grounds for supporting justice.
Such declarations can help shore up support for a reasonable public conception of
justice when it is challenged or under threat. More broadly, there is much that we can all
learn from various traditions of religious and philosophical thought.
Nevertheless, in the ideal case of a well-ordered society, on Rawlss original
view, legislators and citizens would have no great interest in introducing
comprehensive considerations into deliberation prior to decision: invoking only political
values is the obvious and most direct way for citizens to honor the ideal of public reason
57

Stout, it should be noted, often seems less interested than Rawls specifically in discussion leading to
decision the legislative point of view -- so it sometimes simply seems as though his subject matter is
discussion in civil society. See Democracy and Tradition.
58
Woltersdorff, 115, 116.
59
See Eberle 10, Woltersdorff 111-13.

14

and to meet the duty of civility. 60 Only under non-ideal conditions, he originally said,
are appeals to the religious grounds for principles of justice helpful to, for example,
reassure skeptics of ones sincere support for justice or to challenge unjust positions that
claim the support of religious or philosophical traditions. 61
In revisiting the idea of public reason, Rawls broadened or loosened his previous
conception to allow that, even in ideal conditions, citizens may argue for laws concerning
basic justice based on their own religious or philosophical grounds so long as in due
course they or members of their group also offer a fully adequate shared or public
rationale. Rawls called that last stipulation the proviso and the new version the
inclusive view of public reason. 62 It is not immediately clear why the new view should
be thought an improvement. According to the liberal principle of legitimacy, the
criterion of reciprocity, and the attendant idea of mutual respect, citizens and legislators
would ideally decide on the constitutional essentials based on the shared public reasons
of a liberal political conception. So, as Larmore says, when the moment comes for a
legally binding decision, we must take our bearings from a common point of view. 63 I
agree with Larmore that Rawlss adjustment is not a principled improvement but it does
reveal the flexibility of public reason in practice, a matter I return to below.
Some critics of public reason reject even Rawlss latitudinarian inclusive view.
Christopher Eberle discusses the case of citizens who have tried and failed to discern a
public rationale for a law they believe well-justified on religious grounds. Moreover, no
one else has discerned adequate public grounds either: there are no general grounds only
particular sectarian religious grounds. Still, says Eberle, such citizens do no wrong if
they advocate for said law based on the only grounds available: their own particular
religious grounds. Sandel, Stout, and Woltersdorff often seem to agree. 64 Gaus, on the
other hand, holds that legitimate laws are ones that are justifiable from the standpoints of
all ones reasonable fellow citizens, taken separately.
We can now discern two alternatives to public reason orthodoxy. The more
radical alternative, articulated by Eberle, rejects both public reason and the liberal idea of
60

PL 248.
See PL 247-254.
62
See PL li-lii, 249, PL VI:8 CHECK: FURTHER CONDITIONS.
63
Public Reason, 383.
64
XXXX
61

15

legitimacy. It argues that citizens do no wrong when they (a) advocate for laws based
exclusively on their own sectarian religious grounds and (b1) no other grounds, religious
or otherwise, are on offer or available. This view of political advocacy is particularist in
form and scope. The second view is particularist in form but general in scope. It
welcomes (a) advocacy in all phases of politics based solely on sectarian grounds but
insists (b2) that other grounds should be available that are sufficient to justify the law to
each and every one of the comprehensive standpoints that exist in the polity (Protestant,
Kantian, Emersonian, etc.). 65 On this view, each one may seek to advance laws based on
justifications that are particularist in form, but a good political system will filter out laws
that fail to secure a general set of particularist justifications that hold for all; so the set of
justifications are particular in form but, when added up, general or inclusive in scope.
There is a further question of assigning specific duties to citizens. The advocates
of this second position might charge citizens with advocating only laws that pass the
stringent test of serial or iterative justification, but that could replicate the problem of
inhibiting religion-based advocacy. Gaus takes a different line and argues that a political
system should be designed with many minority veto points of the right sort, so that
citizens are free to advocate for laws without inhibition based on their comprehensive
religious and philosophical reasons, and the political system will register citizens
defeater reasons and prevent the passage of laws that are not justified from all points of
view. 66 We might say that Gaus gives citizens a conditional permission to engage in
advocacy based exclusively on ones own religious or philosophical reasons.
65

I am again indebted to Alex Levitov for comments here.

As I understand him, Gaus takes this position because he is not convinced that citizens are equipped to
competently discern which laws can be justified to every point of view. Like well-designed markets that
achieve an equilibrium of supply and demand by drawing on dispersed local knowledge that no planner
ever comprehends, a well designed political system may register citizens various defeater reasons and
approximate political legitimacy (justification from all points of view) without that being anyones
conscious intention. The role of citizens in such a system would be to act on local and particular
knowledge, with the system somehow tracking vetoes from different viewpoints. Gaus invokes Hayek to
emphasize the importance of local knowledge and to cast doubt on citizens competence to make broad,
system-oriented value judgments and political choices. Well-designed political institutions, like markets,
may bring about legitimate outcomes as unintended consequences that are not part of the design of
participants. Obviously, if Gaus is right that assigning citizens a duty to offer public reasons degrades the
systems capacity to track public reasons that is a practical reason for not assigning such a duty to citizens.
I dont believe that Gaus has shown this. Nor has he said, so far as I can see, whether it is important for
citizens to be aware, when advocating for laws based on their particular comprehensive reasons, that the
system is designed to register objections from others.
Stout also acknowledges seemingly in the spirit of public reason that,

66

16

So it is possible to reject the idea that laws ought to be justified to all on a shared
basis or from a common point of view, while retaining the conviction that laws need to be
justified to all.67 This allows critics to chide advocates of public reason for not being
satisfied with a plurality of rationales, and to reject only the aspiration to a shared basis.
I am not sure how many of the critics would embrace Gauss view. The iterative or
serial account of justification advanced by Woltersdorff and Stout could point in the same
direction.
This convergence 68 or plural reasons model of public justification revises the
liberal ideal of legitimacy: laws that pass the test of universal serial personal
justification or iterative dialogue will thereby pass a test of acceptance from the many
disparate particular standpoints within the political community. Insofar as different
individuals arrive at a justified belief in the same law, L, for different (even incompatible)
reasons, then on what grounds can we say L is not justified or legitimate? 69 Critics could,
on this basis, offer their own alternative accounts of respect, reasonableness, and
reciprocity, at least insofar as the commitment to justification from the differing
particular standpoints is mutual and self-conscious. Respect and reasonableness require
that if A, B, and C, are to be coerced, I should seek reasons that are good for A, reasons
that are good for B, and reasons that are good for C. I have no reason to seek reasons that
are good for A, B, and C jointly; that is, taken together and regarded as with me members
of one public or community. Ad hoc reasons, as Woltersdorff says, tailor-made for
ones addressee, seem entirely adequate. 70 Indeed, because citizens are not asked to
abstract away from their particular comprehensive views, proponents of this view can
argue that this view is more respectful of citizens: it respects others in their particularity,

Fairness and respect require an honest effort, on the part of any citizen advocating a policy, to justify it to
other reasonable citizens who may be approaching the issue from different points of view. When
proposing a political policy one should do ones best to supply reasons for it that people occupying other
points of view could reasonably accept. Democracy and Tradition, 65.
67
See Gaus and Valliers rejection of the shared reasons rationale in The Place of Religious Belief, p.
11. Having our own reasons and converging is enough. A law is publicly justified when everyone has
reasons of their own justifying a law; Gaus rejects the duty of civility because it depends on the consensus
view, ibid. 12. See the helpful discussion in Fred DAgostino, Free Public Reason: Making It Up As We
Go Along (New York: Oxford, 1996).
68
The distinction between convergence and consensus models is very nicely developed by DAgostino,
Free Public Reason.
69
I owe this formulation and challenge to an anonymous reviewer for PPE.
70
Wolters, in A&W,107.

17

not in the abstract: not only as someone who is free and equal, but as someone who
embraces the Jewish religion. 71 Finally, because on this view, principles of political
justice must secure the support of each of the reasonable comprehensive views within the
political community, it might be argued that support for principles of justice that survive
the iterative winnowing process will be stable. So this view does not altogether reject but
rather offers its own revisionist conceptions of legitimacy, civility, mutual respect, etc.:
iterative and disaggregated, a series of bilateral or multilateral transactions among parties
each operating from their own comprehensive standpoint or justificatory framework.
So, on this view, we do not need a consensus with respect to the reasons
supporting principles of justice. All we need is convergence on shared principles of
justice, or a common rule of law. We should respect the fact that citizens have many
different points of view many different epistemic frameworks (or comprehensive
conceptions) and abandon hope of sharing a case for the principles of justice in the
currency of shared public reasons; it is enough if somehow pass only laws that secure the
support of an inclusive set of plural rationales or reasons.
Shared principles of justice on the revisionist plural reasons account will occupy a
thinner moral space yielding pride of place in public discussions to the plurality of
traditions and world-views of the many religious and moral communities of civil society.
Emphasis shifts to value of respecting the autonomy and integrity of particular religious
and moral communities and belief systems. At the top, as we might think of it, there is
still the hope that we can converge on shared principles of justice, but just below that thin
and narrow common levelthe laws we converge on each for our own reasons--public
deliberation will be dominated by the many justificatory silos defined by the traditions
of particular moral and religious groups.
The critics concerns are far from frivolous. Given the depth and breadth of
diversity of modern societies the aspiration to consensus -- on substantive principles of
justice, shared forms of reasoning, and a shared rationale for principles of justice -- might
see hopelessly unrealistic, unnecessary, perhaps even counter-productive. We could
reject consensus and retain an idea of mutual respect among citizens. So why should we
care whether citizens have shared reasons for the laws they advocate?
71

Wolters in A&W, 111.

18

III. Why Public Reason?

Let us now consider what resources the alternative models of public discourse
have for informing a dynamic political system. In one corner is Rawlsian public reason,
or the consensus view. In the other corner is the convergence of many silos view,
involving iterative justification, plural rationales, and justification without a public.
Each view, if adopted, could have very different practical consequences. Several
issues involve system dynamics. First is the problem of elaborating the law and applying
it to new cases and circumstances. Second is the problem of negotiating the relationship
between public and non-public values and considering complaints issuing from different
religious or comprehensive ethical/philosophical standpoints. Third is the question of
what happens as new groups enter or arise within society, what is their relationship to
ongoing institutions and practices of justification? I will mainly focus on what seem to
be the principled and practical advantages of the public reason view because it is harder
to know how the silos view would work in practice.

Public Reason and Political Decision: Facilitating or Obstructing the Public Agenda?
From the standpoint of the public agenda the many silos model of iterated
dialogue seems cumbersome and inefficient; it foregrounds disagreements rooted in
citizens differing comprehensive standpoints. Instead of one joint conversation in the
shared currency of public reasons, it seems to call for many bilateral and multilateral
conversations between and among moral and epistemic silos: as if via many projects of
translation. For the consensus or public reason model, such discussions are indeed vital
components of the wider public sphere, but they are not a substitute for hope that a shared
currency of ideas will assist joint deliberation and fair decision.
The main attraction of the consensus view of public reason is captured by its
intrinsic virtues: of reasonableness, reciprocity, and respect. But it would also seem to
have practical advantages. Advocates of the convergence view seem to downplay the
inherent difficulty of forging a working political consensus in modern mass democracies.
The United States is a nation of over 300 million people, who profess a vast array of
religious beliefs and philosophical views. The idea of public reason formalizes and gives
19

philosophical expression to the very practical need to get clear about what are our shared
aims as a political community. It seems enormously helpful in that regard to arrive at a
mode of shared discourse for debating and deliberating on those shared aims. It would be
tedious to rehearse all of the considerations that stand behind the old idea of a social
contract for limited ends, but those considerations undergird public reason. We have an
important but limited political agenda, and we need to get on with it. The time for
discussion is not unlimited and decisions must be made concerning how our institutions
will be ordered. As Stephen Holmes has argued, limiting the agenda of public discussion
and decision hugely facilitates the pursuit of that agenda. 72 The sense of shared
citizenship and the recognition that one occupies a public point of view would seem to be
important framing mechanisms that shape the way one approaches the public agenda.
Absent a shared, disciplined sense of which considerations are germane and which are
not, public deliberation could fast become unmanageable.
The idea of public reason focuses on public deliberative forums when legislators
and other public officials are deciding for all matters that touch on basic principles of
justice. Citizens take part in many deliberative settings informally, or in civil society, in
churches, over office water coolers, in bars, and at home where norms of public reason
have no proper role. The crucial venue for public reason is when some are deciding for
all what the law will be concerning basic justice. The too it seems reasonable to be
guided as much as possible by Forms of reasoning and argument available to citizens
generally, and so in terms of common sense, and by the procedures and conclusions of
science when not controversial 73 Democratic citizens play a pivotal role in
lawmaking, albeit usually indirectly: while the voice and vote of each counts for very
little, together they decide crucial issues of justice for all.
Of course, the critics could say that a lot of the work of reconciling our
differences is done procedurally: we dont expect agreement, which is why we agree to
vote at the end of the day, and the greater number wins. It is a mistake, however, to
exaggerate the work done by elections in modern democracies. Mass elections and
majority (or plurality) voting rules are important means of resolving certain vital

72
73

Holmes, Gag Rules and the Politics of Omission,

PL 162.

20

questions, including which party will control the legislature. But political decisions are
regarded as legitimate because of all of the other safeguards and guarantees, checks and
balances, and institutional mechanisms that help insure that minority rights are protected,
minority voices are heard, and well-informed discussion is brought to bear in the
administration of law. Moreover, constitutions insure that particular laws and policies
tend to change slowly and incrementally and this is in part because legal reforms, to be
considered legitimate, cannot run too far ahead of widespread public convictions. Our
politics is pervasively about reason-giving and reason-demanding. It works (when it
does) because it is subject to some discipline concerning the appropriate terms of shared
deliberation. In contrast, the model of iterative or serial justification offered by Gaus
and Stout thus looks like a recipe for gumming up the political works. And it is difficult
to believe that social justice is sustainable on this basis. 74
These issues involve substantive value judgments. If one does not value public
purposes or if one believes in a strong presumption of liberty as non-interference (and if
one is confident that protections for negative liberties could somehow be insulated from
more general political obstruction), then obstructing the public agenda might seem fine.
Likewise, if the publicly-oriented model of deliberation is regarded as prone to unfairness
because it does not sufficiently foreground disagreements rooted in comprehensive
conceptions (such as religious traditionalism) then one may resist it. Insofar as
substantive value judgments push in one or another direction, each model may tend to
generate distinctive grievances. But one thing the critics underestimate is the public
reason models openness to dissent at many points.

Public Reason and Interpreting, Applying, and Elaborating Law

Critics often say they regard it as important that we come to agree on substantive
principles of political justice, but do not think it important that we share a rationale or
publicly reasoned account. So presumably they agree that it is important that we
converge on support for constitutional provisions and laws of various sorts, including
ones providing for basic liberties and their priority and the fair distribution of
opportunities and resources. Why go further, the critics seem to ask?
74

See my review of Galstons Liberal Pluralism; American Prospect.

21

How far is too far? Evidently when we that say that citizens should justify their
fundamental political convictions based on evidence and reasons that all reasonable
citizens could share and when we articulate and recommend guidelines of public inquiry.
So let us consider: what happens after a law has been enacted? The task remains
to interpret and administer the law, apply it, and extend it to new circumstances via
executive branch agencies and courts in ways that the public can see to be non-arbitrary.
Moreover, laws need to be understood as forming a coherent system, so that our
expectations about citizens conduct are consistent. Equally important, the effectiveness
of a legal system depends upon a considerable measure of voluntary compliance and that
in turn depends upon perceptions of the laws legitimacy. Evidence suggests that the
effectiveness of a system of criminal punishment depends in part on the systems not
departing too far from ordinary citizens convictions about deserved punishments. 75
Likewise, systems of taxation and the military draft are effective when tapping into a
widespread sense of the reasonableness of rules and other citizens general tendency to
comply. Rules of law are public, general, and prospective so that citizens can understand
them, anticipate their requirements, and comply. 76 A general sense of the rationale
behind the law will be extremely useful in circumstances where one is uncertain about the
exact content of the law. It is a great practical advantage for any legal and political
system to be able to count on some degree of understanding of the rationale for law.
Then all citizens would be able, in principle, to enter into the mindset appropriate to
officials exercising their discretion and consider for themselves the appropriate standards
of conduct. Rawls puts considerable emphasis on keeping the principles of justice and
the guidelines of public inquiry as simple and transparent as possible, so that public
reasoning can be publicly seen to be correct and reasonably reliable. 77
It seems clear that the whole system of rule generation, elaboration, and
compliance will benefit enormously from a general sense of the proper aims and content
of law. Critics might seek to distinguish private law (property, contracts, and torts) and
criminal law, on the grounds that these give structure to a good deal of our ordinary
75

See the work of Paul Robinson and others.

For an interesting account with relevance to liberal ideas of reasonableness and reciprocity, see Margaret
Levi, Consent, Dissent, and xxx (on the draft, taxes, etc.). I have benefitted from an unpublished paper by
Gillian Hadfield and Barry Weingast, What is Law?
77
PL 162
76

22

interactions, from constitutional principles are more remote from citizens daily lives.
There may be a difference of degree, but too sharp a distinction would be mistaken and
misleading. Principles of justice on the liberal account are meant to be public in the
senses described above: available to citizens generally and furnishing them with critical
standards of fairness to guide their thinking about politics, including party competition,
candidate selection, and policy design. In a democratic society principles of justice will
be debated, contested, evoked, and applied by political actors at all levels, including
citizens. They will need to be elaborated and applied by judges who adjudicate
complaints by ordinary citizens to whom the law is being applied, and the authority of
judges will depend upon citizens perceptions of the laws fairness as a principled system
that applies fairly to all citizens. Are the distinctions embodied in the law morally
defensible or morally arbitrary? Can we justify the extension of some entitlement or
claim to some citizens and not others? Can the less well off see that they are part of a
system of fair cooperation in which they count as equals along with all others?
Obviously public officials including judges will have special responsibility for
elaborating and justifying the relevant distinctions but the whole point of justice as public
reason is to try and make the moral grounds of our shared political order transparent and
justifiable to all. But the whole point of principles of justice on the liberal model, as we
saw above, is to furnish fair grounds which ought to reconcile all of us to our political
institutions on a shared basis: so that we might all be free and willing participants in
social and political life, and so the least well off in particular need not regard themselves
as victims of unfairness. Public reason is the keystone of this structure of thought.
So when it comes to settling issues such as whether justice requires extending the
civil institution of marriage to same sex couples, proponents of public reason naturally
expect public officials to decide based on publicly accessible relevant considerations.
And in fact, opponents of same sex marriage have emphasized the possible negative
impact on the well-being of children; a perfectly appropriate consideration. 78 No

78

For an account, see Frederick Liu, XXX, Princeton senior thesis. And Frederick Liu and Stephen
Macedo, XXX.

23

respectable national political figure rests the argument against same sex marriage simply
on the sinfulness of homosexual acts, or any purely religious consideration. 79
James E. Fleming has recently argued 80 that Rawlss account of the two moral
powers helps organize and give structure to basic constitutional values. The best
understanding of the US Constitution, on Flemings reading, sees that document as
designed to protect liberties that help citizens exercise and develop the two moral powers
of free and equal persons: personal autonomy which encompasses freedom with respect
to the most important aspects of ones life, and deliberative autonomy which covers the
liberties and opportunities that form the ideal of equal citizenship in a democracy.
Fleming nicely elaborates a Rawlsian liberal democratic ordering of constitutional values;
a public, political conception in the sphere of constitutional law. There is no
philosophical surplus here: the practical principles do justificatory work. 81
I have so far surveyed what seem like some significant advantages of the idea of
public reason when it comes to deciding upon and interpreting, applying, and elaborating
the meaning of laws. Critics will argue that these supposed advantages come at the cost
of pushing disagreement too far into the background, and inhibiting the expression of
complaints or insights flowing from religious and comprehensive frameworks. We need
to dig deeper into public reasons model of deliberation to see that these criticisms are
unfounded. Public reason properly understood invites the negotiation of public values
and non-public (or comprehensive) standpoints and value conflicts in the formation of
principles of justice and at later stages in politics.

Negotiating Public and Non-public Values: Three Stages of Justification

Citizens ideally come together around a public political conception of justice:
shared principles and a shared moral account of supporting reasons. In some respects it is
79

A harder question is whether moral arguments against homosexual sex acts based on natural law are
impermissibly based on philosophical convictions that are incomprehensible to reasonable citizens who do
not share the natural law framework. I believe the answer is yes, but it is also the case that very many
features of the natural law argument are rejected by reasonable citizens.
80
Securing the Substantive Constitution: The Case of Autonomy (Chicago: University of Chicago press,
2006).
81
Perhaps I need to engage the claims of Cass Sunstein who urges that judges entertain under-theorized
agreements, and decide only one case at a time without resort to grand theories and broad principles.
The aim is to facilitate agreement on particular cases by not waving the red flag of broad principles and
extensive implications. Sunsteins argument concerns the judges role specifically, see Dworkin Review.

24

important to regard the public conception as complete and free-standing: as itself

furnishing sufficient resources to decide questions concerning justice and basic rights,
and so not essentially dependent on any particular comprehensive belief systems citizens
also hold. This makes good on the commitment to reciprocity understood as the desire to
act on reasons concerning fundamental justice that ones fellow citizens can also share:
we can jointly and fairly deliberate on political justice based on reasons and evidence we
also share. The autonomy and integrity of that public standpoint makes it equally
available to all of us. We expect it to be adopted by public officials who take it as a
guide, and this allows us also to understand and support or criticize their performance.
That is not, however, all there is to public reason. Citizens must also consider the
justifiability of principles individually from the standpoint of their own comprehensive
beliefs, and this may lead to adjustments in the way that the political community fashions
its collective ideals. Rawls sketches a somewhat formalized but instructive three-stage
sequence, which helps make clear just how seriously the consensus model takes the
concerns of convergence theorists.
Pro tanto justification is carried out entirely in the currency of public reasons,
drawing on political values that can be located in some form in the public culture of a
reasonably just society. Rawls emphasizes repeatedly that the reasonable overlapping
consensus on principles of basic justice is worked out first as a freestanding view
without looking to, or trying to fit, or even knowing what are, the existing comprehensive
doctrines. 82 The political conception should be complete, so that it can alone give a
reasonable answer by public reason to all or nearly all questions concerning constitutional
essentials and basic justice. 83

82

The critics have certainly noticed that Recall too that for Rawls, the priority of the right to ideas of the
good stands for the judgment that particular conceptions of the good should accommodate themselves to
the demands of justice, which is the say, to the bounds established by equal liberty and fairness.
83
Political Liberalism, 386. Rawls emphasizes repeatedly that the principles composing the political
conception of justice can be presented independently from the various comprehensive conceptions that
citizens hold and that the political conception should be worked out so as to be complete, that is, capable of
supplying answers to all, or nearly all, questions involving constitutional essentials and matters of basic
justice. Idea of Public Reason Revisited (IPRR), in The Law of Peoples, 145. For Rawls, the political
conception should itself, on its own, be an adequate framework of thought in the light of which the
discussion of fundamental political questions can be carried out. Indeed, Rawls specifically emphasizes
that What we cannot do in public reason is to proceed directly from our comprehensive doctrine, or a part
thereof, to one or several political principles and values . Instead, we are required first to work to the

25

The second stage of justification is full justification, in which citizens in effect

regard the political conception as a kind of module and seek to embed it in their own
wider philosophical and moral convictions, their various comprehensive doctrines of
truth and value. The political conception can be embedded in various ways or
mapped, or inserted as a module -- into the various doctrines citizens affirm. 84 It is
hoped that differing reasonable belief systems will be (or will come to be) largely or
entirely congruent with the public political conception, but this may not be the case,
especially early on. And so they may make adjustments to accommodate values arising
from their comprehensive convictions. At this second stage, citizens to some degree
particularize or personalize their formulation of the political conception, but still with
an eye to formulating principles that will be acceptable to other citizens as well. 85
Third and finally is public justification by political society as a whole. Here,
all the reasonable members of political society carry out a justification of the shared
political conception by embedding it in their several reasonable comprehensive views.
And in doing so, reasonable citizens take one another into account as having reasonable
comprehensive doctrines that endorse the political conception, and this mutual
accounting shapes the moral quality of the public culture of political society. 86 Citizens
should take into account and give some weight to only the fact the existence of the
reasonable overlapping consensus itself, but the express contents of these [varying
comprehensive] doctrines have no normative role in public justification. 87 Reasonable
citizens will regard it as independently important that we can come as a political
community -- to agree on a shared conception of justice that is acceptable to their
reasonable fellow citizens with different comprehensive viewpoints. Adjustments may
need to be made to the public conception of justice to accommodate complaints issuing
from peoples not entirely unreasonable religious or other convictions and practices.

basic ideas of a complete political conception and from there to elaborate its principles and ideals, and to
use the arguments they provide. IPRR 145-6.
84
PL 386, 7.
85
So they do not proceed directly from their comprehensive doctrine, or part thereof, to one or several
principles and values, and the institutions they support, the project of formulating utually acceptable
principles based on mutually acceptable reasons is always in view, IPRR in Collected papers, 586;
CHECK. I owe this emphasis and formulation to Alex Levitov.
86
PL 387.
87
PL 387.

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Hopefully, the adjustments will attract greater support for core political principles
without exacting too great a cost in our capacity to achieve justice and other public
goods.
I suspect that Rawlss revised, more inclusive ideal of public reason is an
example. As we saw above, Rawls loosened the conditions under which citizens may
argue for laws based entirely on religious or comprehensive. He had previously offered a
more limited endorsement of religious-only advocacy, limiting it to non-ideal conditions
in which such speech might help counter serious injustices. As noted, it is hard to see
why such advocacy should be regarded as an improvement as a matter of ideal theory
(obviously, it should not be subject to legal sanctions). This adjustment might, however,
have been intended to make the core ideas of political liberalism more acceptable to
religious people who suspect that public reason is a stalking horse for secular humanism
or atheism, such as the traditionalists championed by Woltersdorff and Stout. They
might well find the adjustment reassuring and it does not do serious damage to liberal
ideals. 88
In the wake of adjustments and reformulations undertaken to secure the
widespread subscription of reasonable citizens with widely divergent religious and
philosophical views, it is hoped that all reasonable members of the political community
will come together and endorse the revised public conception of justice. Legitimacy is
achieved at this third stage insofar as reasonable citizens jointly converge on political
conceptions that approximate to ideal justice; society is well-ordered. 89
What is striking about this model is that it proceeds along two tracks, and the
critics seem to have noticed only one.
As the critics perceive, public deliberation ought to have a certain autonomy and
integrity: it is freestanding and complete, governed by its own norms, especially its
distinctive public virtues of reasonableness and reciprocity. 90 If we are to share moral
88

Find and note Stouts caustic remark on this adjustment in Democracy and Tradition,
The product of what Rawls calls wide and general reflective equilibrium.
90
We must sincerely believe that the reasons we offer for our political action may reasonably be accepted
by other citizens as a justification of those actions. PL xlvii. Political conceptions should be expounded
apart from comprehensive doctrines and without reference to wider doctrines, PL 12-13, see generally 1215, 40. Relevant to this autonomy and integrity is the completeness of political conceptions of justice: we
should seek to elaborate principles capable of answering all questions of basic justice, and not refer hard
questions to the bar of our comprehensive views, PL 225.
89

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grounds with our fellow citizens that ground cannot be simply a function of our differing
comprehensive frameworks, it must have a logic and coherence of its own so that we can
all enter it as equals and work out its implications. Freestandingness and independence
also contribute to making the shared public conception a resource for public officials: we
can all have greater confidence in their exercise of discretion if we know they are
expected to be guided by public conceptions that we can all also enter into in order to
audit their conduct. With public reason we can differ in our comprehensive religious and
philosophical beliefs while nevertheless fashioning and occupying together a distinct,
coherent, and fully adequate public moral standpoint.
At the same time, however, the political conception ideally gains the free and
informed support of various churches and associations in civil society, and this requires
religiously engaged discussions of justice inside and outside various public political fora.
Public reason makes room for adjustment and accommodation as we fashion principles
that all can live with on fair terms. This process of attending to others faith and
philosophy-based concerns, and considering adjustments to the political conception is,
thus, built into the fundamental conception of public reason.
This reconstruction of public deliberation is, obviously, formalistic and idealized,
but it mimics in philosophical form the structure of much actual constitutional
deliberation. In the first stage a select committee brings its wisdom to bear on fashioning
a powerful and effective document, but with an eye toward eventual ratification by the
community as a whole. The draft would then be produced and disseminated, at a second
stage, for a period of broad discussion and comment. Suggestions for improvement
adjustments and revisionswould be proposed, some in order to secure adequate
consent, and these would be considered and incorporated by the drafting committee. At a
third and final stage the revised document would be submitted for final ratification to the
community as a whole, hopefully securing broad and principled support based both on
the intrinsic merits of the revised document and also based on its special suitability as a
fair and broadly acceptable political charter for this particular people. 91

91

I owe this observation to Dan Posner, who offers the example of the Kenyan constitutional drafting and
ratification process. The American model might seem to have bypassed the middle stage, but of course the
proponents of the Constitution secured ratification by promising opponents that they would promptly frame

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There are other, later points in the political process at which the concerns and
complaints of religious and ethical communities are invited, listened to, and responded to.
In making and administering laws the special burdens that policies impose on religious
groups on account of their particular convictions and practices must be considered:
fairness requires taking account of these special burdens and often we will be justified in
carving out accommodations to general laws. Judicial review is designed precisely to
insure that minority points of view are given an adequate hearing. An elaborate First
Amendment jurisprudence rooted in the free exercise clause provides a framework
(perfectly consistent with Rawlsian public reason) for judges to weigh religiously-based
complaints about laws and policies that impose special burdens on particular religious or
ethical communities. Politically independent judges with life tenure charged with
interpreting a public charter of rights are well-placed to take seriously minority
viewpoints and they often have. But they are also charged with a mediating function:
attending to the perspectives of particular complainants while responding based on a
principled elaboration of the public values of the fundamental charter. 92
So it seems to me that the standard public reason view allows ample space for the
expressing and weighing religiously-based concerns. If our actual practice of public
reason in America insufficiently attentive to religious groups and their insights and
complaints, practical adjustments can be made consistent with the ideal of public reason.

Negotiating Public and Non-public Values: New Groups

It is hard to see how convergence theories--involving plural rationales or many
justificatory siloscan deal adequately with the dynamic elements of a democratic
political order. The plural justifications or many silos view does have a distinctive
conception of legitimacy: convergence of societies many justificatory silos on support
for a particular law or constitutional provision will mean that said law can be legitimately
of a series of amendments which became the Bill of Rights, allowing stage 3 to proceed conditionally upon
a postponed stage 2.
92
A first order reciprocity is built into the search for reasons we can share as citizens, and we can now see
that that involves the possibility of adjusting our initial account of those reasons to accommodate particular
comprehensively-based convictions. A second level of reciprocity is captured by the mutual commitment
to fairly negotiate public/private conflicts via judicial review. This requires groups that are electorally
empowered to listen to minority complaints, but it also requires that minorities give adequate weight to the
values and imperatives of the common political project.

29

enacted and enforce. But then what? What understandings will guide interpretation,
application, and elaboration over time? The silo view seems to lack resourcesshared
guidelines of public inquiry and a mutual commitment to formulating and acting on
reasons that others could share--that seem extremely useful when it comes to interpreting,
applying, and elaborating the law conceived of as a dynamic system.
Another dynamic element concerns new groups: What happens when a new group
(silo) emerges or enters? Will the legitimacy of laws be automatically thrown into
question as new complaints Gauss defeater reasons issue from the new silo? It
seems worrisome that the silo view does not suggest that such objections need to be
framed at any point in the currency of shared reasons.
On either view there will need to be procedures in place for honoring the right to a
hearing of those who complain that general laws impose special burdens on their
religious or ethical convictions or practices. Objections might be dealt with by revising
the law or by carving out exceptions for the beliefs or practices of objectors, or of course
the complaints may be turned aside in whole or in part. But the silo views apparent lack
of a repository of shared reasons and relevant considerationsa shared template, albeit
one that is subject to ongoing reconsideration and negotiation--could exacerbate
inevitable disagreements and misunderstandings about fairness.
On the public reason view, as new groups enter society, or form within society,
they will encounter a going public moral project drawing on the societies traditions and
involving principled forms of shared deliberation. Fairness requires citizens to consider
new complaints and concerns as they arise, including those arising from new
comprehensive conceptions. But, if the newcomers wish to be good citizens they must
also take seriously the shared public conception: personalizing or particularizing it in
their own way, but with an eye to the virtues of reasonableness and reciprocity. The
many silos view give some weight to convergence on shared principles, but neglects the
role of shared forms of reasoning which, for liberal public reason, is part of the substance
of how we exhibit proper respect for one another.
The dynamics of alternative systems also matter for the tendency of new silos
to form and express demands or grievances about the distribution of benefits and burdens.
The formation of new groups will not be independent of ( or exogenous to) the rules and
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norms of the system. By awarding defeater reasons to justificatory silos while

downplaying the importance of developing a common stock of reasoned standards for
adjudicating disputes, convergence theories may well encourage the formation of new
silos as a way of gaining leverage over political outcomes. It is not clear to me how
politics would work on convergence or silos views, but that model seems like a
prescription for sewing social division.
The standard public reason view attends to the importance of institutions
educative or formative role over time. When we live under institutions that embody
principles of justice those principles and their rationale will be expressed by public
officials in the course of operating the institutions. We hope, says Rawls, that the
reasonable comprehensive doctrines affirmed by reasonable citizens in society can
support it, and that in fact it will have the capacity to shape those doctrines toward
itself. 93 Citizens public and non-public points of view need to be brought into
alignment, via public deliberation, free discussions in civil society and also by making
some adjustments to the public conception, as needs be, to gain sufficient support for the
core principles. The educative and formative effects of political institutions are
important, because people are frequently prepared to adjust their comprehensive views as
they experience fair cooperation with others. This could mean that that non-ideal
adjustments tend to become less important over time. 94
The critics might reply that the standard model of public reason achieves greater
stability by paying insufficient attention to the concerns of religious and ethical
dissenters. They say that by emphasizing shared reasons the consensus model pushes
such disagreements too far into the background, resulting in laws and policies that neglect
minority interests and perspectives. These concerns are important. But as we have seen,
the public view invites the expression and negotiation of non-public (or comprehensive)
evaluative standpoints in the very formation of principles of justice and at later stages in
politics. However, we should listen to complaints and learn from the insights of
particular traditions while recognizing the importance of a shared public moral space;
indeed we could only form a shared public moral space on a stable and sound basis if

93
94

PL 389. Emphasis added.

On the educative role, see the discussion of full publicity, PL, pp. 66-8, 71.

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religion and philosophy-based concerns and complaints are fully heard. The critics
seriously underestimate public reasons receptivity to dissent and constructive negotiation
across public and non-public reasons. In effect, the standard view builds in the worries
that are expressed by advocates of convergence views but the converse is not true. I do
not believe that religious standpoints are systematically neglected in our politics. But if
they are, adjustments can be made in applying the public reason model. The convergence
view is not a solution to any problem that needs fixing.

Common Knowledge and Mutual Assurance

As we have seen, Rawls puts a great deal of store in the publicity of the principles
of justice: the grounds for the principles should be plain truths capable of being widely
accepted. 95 In an interesting recent study, Michael Suk-Young Chwe describes various
ways that people solve coordination problems through the generation of common
knowledge: this is not just knowledge that happens to be shared by members of a group,
but rather involves, as he puts it, knowledge of others knowledge, knowledge of others
knowledge of others knowledge, and so on. Chwe explores the social processes that
help to generate common knowledge, including public rituals: public ceremonies,
rallies, and media events in which part of what is generated is a common experience that
is known to be common. Public rituals do not just let audience members know certain
things they also let audience members know what (and that) other audience member also
know. 96 Awareness of others awareness is crucial.
Chwe offers an array of examples of common knowledge generation: from
circular amphitheaters and meeting rooms (that allow for everyone to have eye contact),
to advertising on the Super Bowl (which tends to be for products, such as computer
operating systems, whose attractiveness depends upon common adoption). Social
networks are also important. 97
Common knowledge can help groups mobilize for change: since individual action
is costly and liable to be ineffective unless coordinated with the actions of others, it is not
95

PL 225
Michael Suk-Young Chwe, Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge (Princeton
University Press 2001), 3-4.
97
Chwe argues that loosely knit networks are better at spreading information, but that tightly knit groups
are better at generating common knowledge, ibid., 7.
96

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enough for grievances to be widely felt, it is crucial that the existence of widespread
disaffection should become commonly known. 98
Common knowledge helps people coordinate their actions in service of mutual
advantage (which is Chwes main concern). It is also important for cooperation on the
basis of shared values. Public declarations of commitment to common standards and the
periodic restatement of shared principles should provide mutual reassurance and
strengthen the sense of shared commitment. Such practices can make for a more
intelligible and predictable social order, and also one in which trustful cooperation can
flourish. There is satisfaction in knowing that when one is doing ones part to sustain a
common venture, others are also knowingly doing their part; and where participants make
this reassurance publicly manifest to one another our resolve to play our parts should be
strengthened. Where it is common knowledge that members of a political community are
jointly committed to doing their part to sustain shared ideals of fair cooperation we can
say that an important form of political community is realized.
Now, defenders of the convergence view will argue that it can equally well
become common knowledge that we citizens support the principles of justice, each for
our own reasons. So why isnt THAT common knowledge sufficient?
Good question. It would seem right to say that the benefits of mutual
intelligibility and assurance depend in important part on whether we converge only on
common substantive principles Rawlss principles of justice or some other each for
our own reasons, or if instead we also converge on a shared supporting rationale or set of
moral reasons that is commonly known (and commonly known to be commonly known):
a shared rationale that provides an adequate moral justification for those principles (even
though other justifications are also available, shared by differing subsets of the
community). Without the common rationale or shared reasons, we would agree on
shared commitments, but differ widely on how to justify the result.
The shared rationale of the consensus view would seem to matter in several ways.
First, absent a shared justification we would be unlikely to be able to engage in shared
elaboration (per the previous section). Second, agreement on principles without a shared
rationale represents a thinner form of mutual intelligibility and a weaker form of mutual
98

Ibid., 8-18.

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assurance. For the sake of a common enterprise it certainly is something insofar as we

converge on shared rules of action, each for our own reasons (even a modus vivendi is
better than nothing). But our capacity to intelligibly and reliably assure one another of
our shared commitment to common principles would seem far more solidly grounded and
stable, more mutually intelligible, if we share a rationale, or a widely convincing proof.
Then we not only agree each for our own reasons, but hold a powerful rationale in
common, the reiteration of which becomes part of our shared political practice. 99 The
greater mutual moral intelligibility would seem to be intrinsically reassuring for good
reason: the agreement is more robust. In contrast, the agreement of many of my fellow
citizens will, on the convergence view, be grounded in views and systems of authority
that I do not accept, and which I may find baffling, and subject to change on grounds that
I neither comprehend nor share. It becomes hard not to regard an agreement on
principles fragile when the other parties base their agreement on grounds that I cannot
share, or even comprehend. On the convergence view, there will be many possible
worlds, some quite proximate, in which my collaborators cease to honor our shared
commitments. In that sense (not in the predictive sense) it is less robust. 100
Thirdly, the existence of a shared public moral account would seem to provide
common educative and formative resources: restatement of the public case should play a
formative as well as a reassuring role. The relevant formulas would be there to be
invoked in Supreme Court cases and the public statements of public officials, the relevant
principles should run through the platforms of the major political parties. The relevant
language and concepts should shape our collective self-understandings, and help promote
mutual reassurance. Rawls evidently places a great deal of emphasis on the educative
and formative dimensions of public institutions 101 including the capacity of the political
conception to bend comprehensive conceptions toward itself and the consensus view
seems much better equipped to do this.
Now, advocates of the convergence view will have several comebacks. They will
insist that an agreement may be more stable when really rooted in citizens
99

See Rawls on the three levels of publicity, and publicitys educative role, Justice as Fairness, 121-2.
I think this is indebted to Philip Pettit; need cite.
101
See Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 116-19, stressing the extent to which the principles of justice
effectively and publicly embedded in stable constitutional institutions should help shape and constitute
the character of a people.
100

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comprehensive views. But as we have seen, a hope for convergence is built into the
consensus view, while a hope for shared reasons is not built into convergence. So it
seems to me that the hoped-for advantages of convergence are all already accounted for
when we properly understand the standard consensus ideal.
Many critics worry that the consensus view seeks premature closure with respect
to differences or that it is impatient with disagreement. Again, I do not think this is so:
consensus is an ideal point. How could we not hope that citizens might agree on
principles of justice for the right that is good -- reasons? That does not mean that
disagreements should be swept under the rug, it only means that we should try to discern
and promote the best available understanding of justice that might unite the political
community, or at least its reasonable members. So I believe that Jeffrey Stout is in error
when he argues that The practical expression of social contract theory is, unsurprisingly,
a program of social control, an attempt to enforce moral restraint on discursive exchange
by counting only those who want to reason on the basis of a common set of fixed rules as
reasonable. 102 The consensus view invites dissent and it does not unjustifiably inhibit
speech. 103 Critics might also reject the idea of the political community and its institutions
as a formative project. Why? Lack of support for the goals of the community, or a
preference for the goals of other competing communities? At one point, Stout derides the
liberal social contract as poor mans communitarianism, and he quotes Nicholas
Woltersdorff: the liberal is not willing to live with a politics of multiple communities.
He thinks we need a shared political basis. It is as though the critics think that a liberal
political community seeks to occupy too much moral space at the expense of particular
faith communities. I simply do not agree: our shared political aims, including social
justice, are of great moral consequence.

Whose Ox Gored?
Let us ask, who is liable to suffer if we lack the deeper sense of mutual
intelligibility and moral reassurance provided by public reason liberalism? Not the
102

Stout, Democracy and Tradition, 81.

Public knowledge that the institutions of society satisfy justified principles of justice, and the fact that
those principles really are embedded in stable constitutional institutions, should have a profoundly
educative effect on citizens who grow up in a well-ordered society, see Justice as Fairness, 122.
103

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relatively powerful, who will have the resources to engage in private self-help and
defense when others act unfairly or shirk their political moral obligations. Indeed, they
will often stand to gain in narrowly self-interested terms from the breakdown of social
justice. Rather, it will be the relatively weak and powerless who most depend upon and
benefit from a shared commitment to fair terms of social cooperation. This is especially
so with respect to egalitarian principles of justice which aim to make the social order
freely acceptable from all points of view, especially that of view of the least well off.
So if we ask for whose sake we seek to make shared principles of justice,
including distributive justice, a matter of common knowledge and shared reasoning, the
obvious answer is: for all our sakes, so that we can all enjoy the good of a shared
intelligible commitment to fair cooperation for its own sake, but most especially for the
least well-off who are most vulnerable to others self-serving flight from public
justification.
Social justice on the liberal contractualist model is about conceiving of society
as a fair system of cooperation (not mere coordination for mutual advantage) based on
principles that are widely understood to be justified as a matter of common knowledge,
satisfying demanding standards of publicity and reciprocity. Mutual assurance of our
commitments thereto would seem good for all who value the moral ideal of fair social
cooperation, and most especially for societys most vulnerable members. It is the weak
rather than the strong who most count upon mutual assurances of adherence to fair
standards and on publicity to help correct abuses of those standards.

V. Conclusion
This paper has sought to lay out the practical political values that inform the
liberal ideal of public reason, and the close relation between the aspiration to public
justification and justice. Liberals hope that citizens can converge on shared principles of
justiceor one among a family of reasonable liberal conceptions--and a shared public
rationale for those principles, and that those principles and the reasoning that supports

36

them may become part of the common political currency of society. 104 We should
consider what is at stake in that ideal, and who stands to lose when we fail to realize it.
Gauss combination of commitments is coherent: his skepticism about shared
reasons and his preference for justificatory pluralism (as opposed to a public point of
view), joins with his presumption in favor of liberty understood as non-interference to tilt
his theory in a classically liberal direction. In the case of most other critics, the political
payoff for rejecting public reason seems to be greater solicitude for religious groups.
So among the considerations that ought to guide ones thinking on these matters
is: where is our politics most going wrong and how do differing political/moral
frameworks of thought orient our attention? Obviously, there are those who worry most
about the supposed exclusion of religion from public life and excessive government
interference in markets. These seem to me far down on any reasonable list of political
moral priorities and, in any event, such concerns ought to be addressed within a publicly
reasoned framework. Political liberalisms focus on fair public deliberation and
justification to alland their tendency to be corrupted by monied interestsseems to me
much closer to the mark.
What of those critics of public reason who reject Gauss classical liberalism and
hope by challenging public reason to promote greater concern for the marginalized and
poor? To reject the aspiration to public reasons and a shared rationale for common
principles of justice is more likely to weaken than strengthen the commitment to social
justice. But I cannot claim to have proven the point, only to have offered some
considerations in its favor.
-- The End.

104

Such a society is a profound good in itself, designed to help its members realize together an ideal of
political community as a fair system of social cooperation among citizens regarded as free and equal.
Justice as Fairness, 132.

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