Gerald Gaus's Justification for the State

This essay examines Gerald Gaus’s justification for the state. Gaus’s justification is neither contractarian nor anarchist, but grounded in the requirements of social morality among free and equal persons. The foundations of his theory lie in his account of moral relations and the idea of public justification. Public justification sustains moral relations in the face of deep disagreement. Social morality, however, has limits. Moral evolution is path-dependent, and societies can settle on suboptimal equilibria that social morality cannot escape on its own. The state enters the picture to perform functions that non-coercive social morality cannot. The state has genuine political authority. It may use justified coercion to enforce its laws and create new duties and rights. But each use of coercion must be independently justified, constrained by a right against legal coercion. The result is a ‘classical tilt’ toward limited government. Public reason liberalism permits a range of legitimate state functions. But it tilts against coercive states whose authority exceeds what can be justified to all members of the public.