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Does the state have a characteristic role in the lives of its subjects, assuming officials are not utterly corrupt? And is that role consistent with its being a potential force for justice? The question is important if, as realists hold, the state is ineliminable. The paper sketches a genealogical way of approaching the issue and gestures at an answer: that whether it is actually just or not, the state's role is to entrench laws that give at least an elite citizenry a range of rights, however limited. This fits with Kant's notion of the civil as distinct from the rightful condition: the ideal of statehood as distinct from justice., Author(s): Philip Pettit [sup.1] [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.16750.35, 0000 0001 2097 5006, Princeton University, , Princeton, USA (2) grid.1001.0, 0000 0001 2180 7477, Australia National University, , Canberra, Australia [...]