My intention in Part II of this book is to answer the question, Is there good reason to believe that a responsible citizen in a liberal democracy morally ought to obey both the principle of pursuit and the doctrine of restraint? The justificatory liberal believes that there is. The “argument from respect” is at the heart of the most promising attempts to articulate a rationale for the claim that each citizen morally ought to pursue public justification and to exercise restraint. In the two immediately succeeding chapters, I will evaluate a number of variations of that argument.

To focus attention on the central issues raised by the argument from respect, I'll adopt the following two assumptions. First, I take for granted the claim that each citizen ought to respect her compatriots. No argument for that claim seems necessary given that the notion of respect enjoys a hallowed place in the pantheon of liberal values. Second, I'll assume for purposes of argument that the justificatory liberal can articulate a defensible conception of public justification. That is, I'll assume that, if the justificatory liberal can show that each citizen ought to pursue public justification and exercise restraint, she'll also be able to articulate a defensible criterion that specifies both the grounds a citizen ought to pursue for her favored coercive laws and the grounds on which she may not support her favored coercive laws.