On the basis of what reasons ought the state’s coercive action to be justified? In this article, I discuss the Rawlsian response to this question, which singles out shared and accessible reasons grounded in political values as the only possible bases for public justification. By engaging with Christopher Eberle’s critique of this position, I defend the Rawlsian argu-ment for public reason as capable of resolving epistemic disagreements in a context of per-sistent practical disagreement. I build my defence on a proceduralist interpretation of pub-lic reason. This interpretation rejects the common idea that central to the project of public justification is the restriction of the kinds of reasons that citizens have in support of collec-tive decisions. The project of public justification requires, rather, that the constraints of public reason apply to the establishment of respectful and legitimacy–generating processes capable of giving citizens valid reasons to comply with collective decisions (while the sub-stance of such decisions may remain the object of disagreement).
