The idea of a constitutional consensus was developed in a 1989 article by Kurt Baier, “Justice and the Aims of Political Philosophy” (Baier 1989). The focus of Rawls’s “political liberalism” is an “overlapping consensus,” a conception of justice that is able to contribute to the stability of liberal society, in spite of inhabitants’ fundamental disagreements over moral, religious, and political views. In Rawls’s terms, the necessary “political” conception should be worked up from “fundamental intuitive ideas” in the public culture, and so independent of society’s comprehensive views. It should also be rooted in moral principles, as opposed to a modus vivendi, which is conceived on the model of a truce, the outcome of political bargaining. While Rawls believes these conditions can be satisied by justice as fairness, Baier presents an alternative. Contending that there is no consensus on Rawls’s principles of justice in the US’s deeply pluralistic culture, Baier argues that “there is a consensus on something else, namely, on the procedures for making law” and on the outlines of a judicial process for settling disagreements. Unlike a modus vivendi, this “constitutional consensus,” as Baier calls it, “is valued for its own sake and for much the same reasons as a consensus on a principle of justice” (Baier 1989, 775). Although Baier recognizes that a constitutional consensus is mainly procedural, an agreement on means to adjudicate differences between adherents of different conceptions of the good, he also argues that political philosophy’s practical aim, “stable political unity,” can be achieved on the basis of something narrower and easier to obtain than the agreement on principles of justice that constitutes an overlapping consensus (Baier 1989, 775). Empirical evidence indicates that something like Baier’s constitutional consensus exists among the vast majority of Americans (Klosko 2000).