By providing an interpretation of Nozick’s justification of the state in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, this paper identifies and illustrates a form of justification that is distinct from traditional hypothetical, teleological, and historical justifications. The proposed counterfactual or rectificationist justification treats the justification of institutional structures as being analogous to that of property distributions, subsuming these domains under a unified theory of justification. The first part of the paper resolves three interpretative puzzles that arise when trying to understand Nozick’s attempt to justify the minimal state by means of a hypothetical invisible-hand account, whereas the second part of the paper develops the general approach in abstraction from Nozick’s framework.