  On this view, the morality of coercion fundamentally explains the normative relevance of actual institutions (Stavropoulos 2009). A related familiar hypothesis in political philosophy assigns to the morality of coercion a fundamental role in the explanation of duties of socioeconomic justice. On this hypothesis, duties of justice (whether egalitarian, as many philosophers suppose, or not) obtain in virtue of the political relation that holds among those who are placed under the coercive control of some government, and are discharged by designing institutions in a way that meets certain constraints (Nagel 2005). Whether or not coercion matters in that way is a topic much discussed in political philosophy, where writers are concerned with ideal arrangements. The question is underexplored in relation to law, where we are concerned with the normative effect of actual arrangements.