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The project of this essay is to stand back from all particular versions of public reason theories, describe their general structure, and assess their prospects. The prospects of this theory, this essay contends, are not bright. The arguments offered for it by its main proponents, such as Rawls and Gaus, are not satisfactory. Moreover, the view is subject to a series of objections – objections regarding the fairness of the view and the feasibility of its application to actual political life – which indicate that we need to look elsewhere when developing a satisfactory account of liberal democracy.

The central thesis in this essay is that the discussions by public reason liberals of the ethic of citizen suffer from a strange kind of myopia; their attention is focused exclusively on just one form of morally-based democratic political activity: policy deliberation and decision. More narrowly yet, they focus exclusively on the sorts of reasons one ought to employ when engaging in that activity, and on what one should do in case one’s reasons fail to persuade all one’s fellow citizens of one’s position. The aim of this essay is to break the grip of this myopia by describing examples of two other forms of morally-committed democratic political activity, not unusual and obscure ways but ways that we all know about, ways that many of us have personally engaged in: broad-based organizing and movement organizing.

Gerald Gaus has developed a distinct version of public reason liberalism and has done so with a great deal of philosophical sophistication. There are two respects in which Gaus’ version of public reason liberalism is significantly distinct. He develops and employs the moral demand argument far more carefully and thoroughly than any other public reason liberal does. And whereas most versions of public reason liberalism are consensus theories, his is a convergence theory. This chapter examines Gaus' view in detail, explores the main arguments Gaus offers for it, and concludes that Gaus' position is unsatisfactory.

This essay moves beyond critique of public reason liberalism to propose an alternative interpretation of the governing idea of liberal democracy. At the heart of that idea is a commitment to not public reason, as Rawls understands that, but to the equal right of citizens to full political voice – this voice to be exercised within an explicit or implicit constitution that imposes limits and guarantees on government, and within a legal order that protects citizens against impairment of their right to full political voice by their fellow citizens. The resulting position is the equal political voice interpretation of liberal democracy.

This chapter describes the transition in the West from a perfectionist view of the state, which states that the task of the state is to “perfect” its citizens, to a protectionist view of the state, which states that the fundamental task of the state is not to cultivate virtue in citizens but to protect them from serious violations of their natural rights by their fellow citizens or by foreigners. This introduction then summarizes the chapters contained in this book.

This chapter develops a principle that determines when governmental activity constitutes an objectionable form of establishment, either religious or secular. Situated within the theory of public reason liberalism, the principle holds that non-coercive forms of establishment, such as the use of religious symbols in government, are governed by a publicly justified purpose requirement. To be permissible, the relevant governmental act must have a purpose that can be publicly justified to multiple qualified points of view. Given that few acts of establishment, religious or secular, have that purpose, this chapter concludes that public reason liberalism is generally unfriendly to non-coercive establishment.

The law of religious liberty in the United States tends to treat religion as special in two ways. It does first by offering religious citizens certain exemptions and accommodations based on their religious objections to otherwise generally applicable law. Second, it enforces certain exclusions of public expressions of religious doctrines or values. But this special treatment is unwarranted since states should recognize religious principles of action as legally equivalent to a variety of sectarian secular doctrines that people affirm as a matter of conscience. This essay argues for the coherence and relative attractiveness of (i) robust protections for both religious and secular conscience, and (ii) weak restrictions on noncoercive establishment of both religious and secular doctrines.