Philosophical accounts of what justifies the state normally focus on certain qualities or functions of the state to explain why centralised coercion is prudentially or morally permissible. Whereas the acceptability of a state is commonly considered to bear on the question of justification, actual acceptance by individuals is not. This article challenges this common view. It inquires into the nature of political justification and argues that disregarding actual acceptance as a justification ground yields an impoverished account of what it means for a state to be justified. This inadequacy arises, I suggest, due to the common view’s inability to prevent a problematic implication whereby a state is allowed to whitewash its unjust territorial gain in virtue of delivering functional benefits to the annexed population.