The Space between Justice and Legitimacy.

But if the rights violations of slavery provide clear side-constraints against the slave-owner's coercion of slaves, why do the rights violations perpetrated by Norwegian officials not equally supply side-constraints against continuing to operate the government? The appropriate position to adopt would seem to be that legitimate regimes have moral powers that illegitimate regimes lack, but they are able to morally bind their constituents only when they are operating justly. After all, if one believes that only democratic regimes are legitimate (as many do), and that democratic states have a distinctive authority, this might explain why states can retain their legitimacy despite perpetrating injustices. As Michael Walzer puts it, "It is a feature of democratic government that the people have a right to act wrongly - in much the same way that they have a right to act stupidly.". [Extracted from the article]