The increasing acceptance of marquee “liberal” doctrines such as liberty of conscience, limited government, and universal adult suffrage occurred mainly during a period in which social contract theory was dormant and other philosophies – Hegelianism, Marxism, and utilitarianism –largely prevailed in the West. If Rawls’s social contract apparatus can deliver something beyond mere “yea-saying” to the liberal consensus, one could confidently say that contract doctrine has helped. Substantive political equality might be that something, but its delivery is still contested.