  There is undoubtedly a certain appeal to the strategy of holding the legal, coercive structure of legal rules to be the entity that delivers distributive justice according to the difference principle. The laws including laws regulating contract, property, torts, and family are set so that, as compared to any alternative set of rules that might be chosen, they work to maximize the long-run primary social good holdings of the people who have least of these. In private life, and carrying out private decisions within the institutions regulated by the coercive rules, the individual citizen has complete liberty to act according to her own values and preferences so long as she obeys the legal rules that apply to her. The strategy reflects a balance of liberty and equality (Nagel 1991).