ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an outline for one philosophical framework, based on the distinction between public reason and background culture, introduced by John Rawls in his Political Liberalism. It focuses on finding a model of public reason and background culture working together in the law, particularly in case of legal change. The chapter argues that the Rawlsian scheme, although modified, seems attractive in a limited sphere of inquiry that is, in investigating legal change. It also provides a useful, Rawlsian-inspired instrument for interpreting and evaluating legal change. The duty of civility obliges citizens to put forward public reasons to justify laws in the public political forum, but it does not bind in every possible social situation to be solved in legal terms. “Public justification happens when all the reasonable members of political society carry out a justification of the shared political conception by embedding it in their several reasonable comprehensive views.
