 Typically public justification addresses the permissibility of political coercion. Coercion might apply to constitutional essentials and basic justice (Rawls 2005). Or it applies to coercive law as well (Quong 2011). Yet some theorists extend public justification beyond coercion. Gaus (2011) and Chad Van Schoelandt (2015) argue that public justification evaluates relations of moral authority. We publicly justify our practice of making moral demands of others, even if the rules we demand others follow are not coercive. Colin Bird (2014) grounds public justification in the standing of democratic citizens as co-authors of legislation. In Bird’s view, we must justify non-coercive legislation that affects the status of citizens. An example might be communicative legislation that defines an optionally sworn national pledge of allegiance. Some public reason theorists broaden the idea of coercion to cover structural coercion (Boettcher 2016, Wong 2020).