 But the dominant strand of the new contract tradition was Kantian. Here John Rawls leads the pack in A Theory of Justice and later in Political Liberalism. Political Liberalism features public justification as this entry understands the concept. Rawls first understood public justification as a hypothetical contract: idealized members of the public choose principles of justice. Only Political Liberalism articulates the challenge that reasonable pluralism poses for political legitimacy. For Rawls, the public must adopt principles justified for them despite their differences. Political power is legitimate only when exercised in accord with publicly justified norms. (Some theorists use “justified” and “publicly justified” as synonyms. See 2.3 below.)