First of all, probably the strongest criticism of “A Theory of Justice” is almost certainly not Robert Nozick's “Anarchy, State and Utopia,” but Micahel Sandel's critique found in his article “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self” and his book “Liberalism and the Limits of Justice.”

I think that the article in “The American Conservative” gives a very imprecise view of what is actually at stake for Rawls' difference principle. I would refer reader's to the chart on page 62 of “Justice as Fairness: A Restatement” which is a nice book because it is Rawls trying to present “A Theory of Justice” and “Political Liberalism” together in one book (which is, I believe, mercifully shorter than both of the prior books!) It also has the advantage of Rawls' critical engagements with HLA Hart, Sandel, Jurgen Habermas, and Benjamin Barber as well as Robert Nozick. As a believer in public reason, Rawls believed that his theories were always improvable and even rejectable over time. We know this because as Rawls' work evolved he improved some sections and rejected other sections of “A Theory of Justice” in particular, though in some sense, “The Law of People's” is a response to a question that Sandel raises about “to whom do we owe justice?” If you're interested in a book that ponders this question in the context of this debate and even tries applying it in a real world context, I recommend Michael Walzer's “Spheres of Justice.”

Speaking of Nozick, one would be well-served to notice the widely similar positions between the arguments Rawls makes with regard to “The fact of reasonable pluralism” and the last section of Nozick's book, entitled “Against Utopia.”

As to the role of religious objections and reasonable pluralism, there are many well-advanced debates on the subject that make the argument as it is presented in “The American Conservative” article seem quite dated. While I do not endorse Christopher Eberle's conclusion (his argument against Gauss is not compelling in my view) no one would deny that “Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics” is the most comprehensive survey of the major arguments on the theme today. While Eberle rejects that the domain of public reason should be as large as his interlocutors, he nevertheless exemplifies the best of public reason in his own book.

Another amusing exchange, if you can get your hands on them, can be found between Stephen Macedo and Robert George on the burdens of public reason. George essentially rejects reasonable pluralism by arguing, “I'm a Thomist, and my moral point of view is correct, and I think I can make the fact that I am correct very demonsrable – why should I compromise?”

To address the question in the comment directly above, there has been a lot of work recently by David Estlund of Brown Robert Talisse of Vanderbilt on epistemic justifications of public reason. Estlund's “Democratic Authority” has made a big splash in the academy, and Rober Talisse's “Democracy After Liberalism” is a fantastic survey of the state of much of this debate in the academic community as it exists now, and not in the days when Hayek, Nozick and Rawls roamed the academic earth.

I know I've gone on too long already… there's so much to say about the subject (which I submit is further proof that Rawls is in no danger of going the way of the snap bracelet) but I cannot but help to weigh in on the deontology/consequentialist debate. If I were to lean on the “crutch of public reason” (I'm not sure how else I am capable of reaching conclusions, but whatever) from a Rawlsian perspective, I would call this dispute a difference in comprehensive doctrine in which we could point out that for the basic structure of society, most of the time what is useful and what is right are going to overlap, as agreeing generally to society as a fair system of cooperation is going to be both “rule utile” and respecting moral autonomy of individuals as either “transcendental moral subjects” in the Kantian vernacular or as “people possessing two moral powers” in Rawls' Anglicized version. As such, our fair system of cooperation is going to allow me to to live my own life as a utilitarian, Catholic, Kantian, Existentialist, etc. unmolested and when we have to make public decisions, we will agree to engage in public reason following the understandings of what the winners and losers of free exchange of ideas on any particular public question owe to one another as can be found in works like Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson's “Why Deliberative Democracy?”

Sorry for the long comment. Rawls and what he has meant to political philosophy is a complex story, yielding numerous advances in theoretical discussions on a great many topics, and I hope that my post created a greater sense of this, perhaps sparked in interest to read some of the books and articles I have mentioned, and did not go on so long as to be insufferable.

“Grounds enough for any of us to reject those rules?” “Can't be a principle of justice?”

This seems to me to be question-begging as well. Surely one has to define the boundaries of a person. Some people wish to include great apes, other species in general, or nature in general in the set of “persons” with rights. Others seek to include the unborn. Too, in different societies and times people have disagreed over whether those with advanced dementia, babies below a certain age, the mentally disabled, insane, or even the physically deformed or feebleminded counted as whole persons with rights (or at least with well-being an interest of the community) or whether they depended entirely on the charity of others with rights.

Certainly there are reasonable answers to this question that explains why certain groups are included and others not. It does seem to me that at least some of the plausible arguments have some difficulty distinguishing between all the possibilities that are in fact treated differently. An argument based solely the inevitability or likelihood of strife is unsatisfactory as well without a fair amount of explanation; clearly there have been animal rights activists and pro life activists who have taken things to the John Brown level, whereas on the contrast societies that wrongly made women dependent were quite stable for many years.

Arguably however the least well-off class in society is not the poor, but the seriously mentally ill. One of my relatives spent most of her life believing that most of the people closest to her were trying to kill her, including her husband, (whom she eventually outlived by a good 20 years). To live in a world where you believe that the people who should be protecting you are in fact coldly plotting your murder – what a horrible place. Not a fate I would wish on anyone.

Yet the seriously mentally ill are arguably incapable of making the social order unstable, after all if you are spending all your time trying to find evidence that your husband is poisoning you when that evidence doesn't exist, it's hard to find time to destroy society.

This also raises to me a question about Rawls' whole enterprise. Behind the veil of ignorance, if my only concern was the mini-max principle, I'd be arguing flat out for society to invest far more resources in looking for cures for mental illness. Poverty is far less of a relative concern.

And what other goals might people have? According to some religius theology, the worse-off people in society are those who have not accepted Christ as their saviour, regardless of how wealthy they are, or how sane they are. A stoic would be arguing for a society where everyone is encouraged to find happiness solely by living a life of virtue and to achieve detachment from friends and family. I am not an expert on Buddhism, but I understand at least some strands also regard detachment as the vital thing in life. The possibilities for “worse-off in society” are endless.

Probably a dumb question, but least well-off compared to what? The current state of affairs? If we're starting from scratch or behind the veil, how do we know who the least well-off will be?

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I agree with this completely, but it's important to see that even Nozick agreed with this- property rights are just on his account only if they develop in just ways from just original acquisitions, and only a fool thinks that is true of current property rights. So, even on Nozick's account we can't just start from the institution of property as it stands. (What we're supposed to do on Nozick's account is even less clear than on other accounts, just one reason why, as even he came to see, the theory in A,S&U really is a non-starter.)