Volume 49, Issue 2, April 2023
Gregory Robson
![Orcid-ID](/pdc/bvdb.nsf/orcid.png)
Pages 337-362
The Duty to Be Transparent When Supporting Laws in Public Discourse
Political liberals on the left (e.g., Rawls) and right (e.g., Nozick) have long been concerned with the moral justification of coercive legal structures. I argue that anyone who publicly advocates a new coercive law is under a moral duty to those whom the law might negatively affect. The duty is to say that the law would be impactful and why its impacts (e.g., its coerciveness and welfare effects) are worth having all-things-considered. This is a defeasible duty of transparency and disclosure. By doing their duty, citizens would better respect each other and even transform public discourse as we know it.