Even if Simmons' objection against Rawlsian public reason accounts is refuted, it remains an open question whether public justification is a necessary condition for political legitimacy.
necessary condition(Counterfactual analysis of causation; Mackie 1965, 1974)
A condition C is necessary for event E if E would not have occurred in the absence of C
objection(as a scientific critique)
A logical problem or reason why something might not work or be true. Einstein found what he thought was a flaw in Weyl's theory.
political legitimacy(Central to disputes about whether justice obligations are confined to the nation state or extend globally)
The property by which a political institution's coercive power is justified and generates obligations
public justification(Component of Estlund's epistemic proceduralism)
The requirement that the justification of political procedures must be acceptable to all reasonable citizens in order to respect their freedom and equality
public reason(Restrictive conception of public reason liberalism, as advanced by Bonotti and Barnhill 2019)
A reason is public if and only if it is compatible with the motivational set of each idealized person.
Simmons (2001) criticizes Rawls’ approach for mistakenly blurring the distinction between justifying the state and political legitimacy (see also section 2.3.). A Rawlsian could reply, however, that the problem of legitimacy centrally involves the justification of coercion and that legitimacy should thus be understood as what creates—rather than merely justifies—political authority. The following thought supports this claim. Rawls—in Political Liberalism—explicitly focuses on the democratic cont