ABSTRACT
In this chapter I wish to discuss two very broad styles of argument which have been used to defend the authority of the state and the attribution of duties to citizens. In each case we shall encounter a style of argument which proceeds from a classical account of normative ethics: in the first place we shall examine utilitarianism; next we shall examine accounts that have their origins in the natural law principles that the good state is the just state and that citizens have a duty to support just institutions. I shall discuss both John Rawls’s argument that citizens have a natural duty to maintain and support a just state, and Christopher Heath Wellman’s argument that both the legitimacy of the state and the citizen’s obligation to obey the law are grounded in a Samaritan duty of care to fellow citizens.
