 On one common view, public reason is a distinctively political idea: it paradigmatically applies to the laws and other political institutions of our society. One way to explain its distinctively political nature is to ground the idea of public reason in the value of justice (Quong 2013; Rawls 1996). On this view we begin with an ideal of society as a fair system of social cooperation between free and equal citizens. As Rawls says, this ideal “provides a publicly recognized point of view from which all citizens can examine before one another whether their political and social institutions are just. It enables them to do this by citing what are publicly recognized among them as valid and sufficient reasons singled out by that conception itself…the aim of justice as fairness, then, is practical: it presents itself as a conception of justice that may be shared by citizens as a basis of a reasoned, informed, and willing political agreement. It expresses their shared and public political reason” (Rawls 1996, 9). Ensuring that the principles that regulate our shared political life can be justified to each citizen by reference to this common point of view—showing these principles can be the subject of public reason—is how we can know that the terms that regulate our political institutions are fair, and therefore just. If our political principles were instead justified by appeal to some reasonably contested moral, philosophical, or religious doctrine, the terms of our public life would not be fair. Public reason, on this view, is the only way to achieve justice given certain assumptions about the nature of well-ordered liberal democratic societies. This rationale for public reason has several advantages (Quong 2013). First, it explains the distinctively political focus of public reason. Second, justice is widely agreed to be an important value, arguably “the first virtue of social institutions” (Rawls 1999a, 1), and thus if public reason is grounded in the value of justice, this would also explain what some take to be an important feature of public reason, namely, that its conclusions ought to have a certain deliberative priority for citizens. Finally, the value of justice can be endorsed by people from diverse religious, moral, and philosophical backgrounds, and so the value of justice can provide a relatively uncontentious basis for public reason.