Abstract
Economic disparities often translate into disparities in political influence,
rendering political liberties less worthy to poor citizens than to wealthier ones.
Concerned with this, Rawls advocated that a guarantee of the fair value of political
liberties be included in the first principle of justice as fairness, with significant
regulatory and distributive implications. He nonetheless supplied little examination of
the content and grounding of such guarantee, which we here offer. After examining
three uncompelling arguments in its favor, we complete a more promising yet less
explored argument that builds on the value of self-respect. We first inspect the
conditions and duties that securing self-respect entails. We then look into how uneven
allocations of the value of political liberties bear, expressively and due to the power
imbalances they yield, on such conditions and duties.