 Rawls argues that public reason imposes a moral duty of civility on all citizens to explain to one another how, at least with regard to constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice, the political positions “they advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of public reason” (Rawls 1996, 217). Citizens, Rawls suggests, should think of themselves as if they were legislators, supporting only those political positions that they believe could be justified by appeal to reasons that all reasonable persons could endorse, and holding government officials to this standard (Rawls 1999b, 576–577). But Rawls appears to believe that public reason imposes greater duties on public officials: elected officials and those who run for office, their staff, and judges. This is because, in these roles, these people work at what Rawls considers the main site of public reason, namely, the public political forum. This forum has three parts: (1) the discourse of judges, (2) the discourse of government officials, and (3) the discourse of candidates for public office and their campaign managers (Rawls 1999b, 575). The public political forum is the arena where our fundamental political principles and institutions are shaped and debated—it is where collective political power is most directly exercised—and thus it is the most appropriate site for the application of individual duties of public reason. When engaged in discourse in this arena, officials are to refrain from appealing to religious or other comprehensive doctrines over which reasonable persons are assumed to disagree, and instead make arguments that appeal to our shared political values. Rawls does, however, qualify this duty by appeal to what he refers to as the “wide view” of public political culture, which permits officials and citizens to introduce their religious or otherwise comprehensive views into political discussion at any point, provided appropriate public reasons are provided in due course (Rawls 1999b, 591). It is also important to note that the duty of civility is, on Rawls’s view, a moral but not a legal duty—it cannot be coercively imposed—and it does not apply to the discussions citizens may have outside the public political forum, for example, the discussions individuals have qua members of private associations, or family members, or discussions within universities, religious institutions, or other parts of what Rawls calls the background culture (Rawls 1996, 220).