 The role of the framework in sustaining a discovery procedure brings us to the second main purpose of “Utopia”. This is the provision of an independent vindication of the minimal state—one that specifically does not depend on “the moral arguments for individual liberty” (309 footnote*) offered in Parts I and II of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Although the activities of the framework are described in terms of protecting the rights that are affirmed in early parts of the book, the utopian advocacy of the framework does not rely upon the validity of those rights. Rather, that advocacy turns on a general endorsement of utopian aspiration combined with the core epistemic claim that, given our ignorance, the only sensible route to utopia is the discovery procedure that the framework sustains.