Abstract: Where frequent, obdurate, reasonable disagreement over the wisdom and the justice of statutes and government decrees is an accepted fact of political life, justification for the force of law may come to rest on the idea that the laws and decrees, however sharply and reasonably contested, gain a kind of immunity against justified complaint from the fact of their having issued in compliance with the terms of a good, right, or accepted constitution. My lecture will draw from recent events and debates in South Africa, in a consideration of possible limits (or objections) to such a constitution-based principle of political justification.