  The claim that a democratic assembly has a right to rule is not incompatible with the idea that there are limits to that right. Indeed, theorists have argued that the very same principle that grounds democratic authority also ground limits to that authority (Christiano 2004.) The principle of public equality on which the argument for democracy is founded also grounds a set of liberal rights (freedom of conscience, association, speech and private pursuits). The reason for this is that democratic assembly that fundamentally denied these liberal rights to individuals would publicly violate the duty of equal respect to those individuals. Those who violate the basic liberal rights of others are publicly treating them as inferiors. To the extent that the democratic assembly's claim of authority is grounded in the public realization of the principle of equal respect, the authority would run out when the democratic assembly makes law that undermines equal respect. This establishes, at least for one conception of democratic authority, a substantive set of limits to that authority.