 The liberal principle requires that each individual be given some basic rights, to the effect that his or her preferences are sometimes socially decisive (i.e., cannot be overridden by others’ preferences). Intuitively, each individual has a personal sphere in which this individual alone should be able to decide what happens. To give a trivial example, I alone should be able to decide whether I sleep on my right side or on my left side, and the same should be true for everyone else. So, if two social alternatives, \(x\) and \(y\), differ only with respect to the side on which individual \(i\) sleeps, then individual \(i\)’s preference between \(x\) and \(y\) should determine the social preference between \(x\) and \(y\). (Recall that alternatives are here understood as richly specified states of society.) Sen’s ‘minimal liberal’ requirement says that at least two individuals in society should have such a decisiveness right between two alternatives each. The requirement is ‘minimal’ because we would ideally want not just two individuals, but everyone to have such rights, and we would ideally want those rights to concern more than a single pair of alternatives each.