The paper seeks to formalize the notion of effective freedom or freedom to realize meaningful choices. The definition of meaningful choice used in this paper is based on the preference orderings of a reasonable person in a society. 1 argue that only the alternatives that can be selected by a reasonable person from the set of all possible alternatives provide a meaningful choice. 1 discuss this approach and provide an axiomatization of the cardinal rule and two lexicographic versions of this rule in this context
