During the century-and-a-half slumber of social contract theory the idea of universal adult suffrage became commonplace. It had long been assumed that formal political equality would more than suffice to defend the less advantaged against class legislation (although the worry shared by Ireton and Mill, that majority rule would enable class legislation favoring the less advantaged, has never disappeared). Rawls argued that a well-ordered constitutional democracy must guarantee the fair value of the equal political liberties (and those liberties alone: The others come within the difference principle in its special form). Rawls complained that this position seemed “never to have been taken seriously.” Rawls suggested a number of devices to secure fair value: promotion devices, such as subsidies of political parties and public debate; insulation devices, such as limits upon campaign contributions and expenditures; and anti-accumulation devices, such as inheritance taxes and public ownership of the means of production. Why, though, would parties in the original position insist on the fair-value guarantee? One argument extends the argument for the priority of the whole family of basic liberties, with special emphasis on stability “for the right reasons” and the shared sense of justice essential to it.