In reply to this objection, proponents of the doctrine of public rules might circumscribe their claims, holding that we should prefer principles of justice that provide a public standard only under certain conditions. One possibility is to relinquish the doctrine of public rules in those cases in which citizens are required to bear costs that are much smaller than the benefits generated by good faith efforts to comply with those principles. This would explain why the indeterminacy, inaccessibility, and lack of verifiable compliance is not troubling in the two cases we have just considered. In the first, the gender egalitarian ethos requires citizens to bear minimal costs in the fight against sexism; and in the second, Cohen’s sacrifice ethos requires citizens to bear potentially larger costs, but the reward is enormous.