How did John Rawls respond to communitarian criticisms of liberalism?

Communitarian critics, such as Michael Sandel, argued that John Rawls and other liberal theorists relied on an incoherent, "atomized" view of the individual as existing apart from society. They contended that because individual identity is socially constituted, it is impossible to formulate principles of justice from behind a hypothetical "veil of ignorance" that abstracts individuals from their social and historical contexts.1

In response, liberal scholars—and Rawls himself—maintained that these criticisms were overstated. They argued that contemporary liberalism is not incompatible with the concept of a socially embedded self. Specifically, proponents pointed to Rawls’s own recognition in A Theory of Justice of the importance of "social unions," where he asserted that "only in a social union is the individual complete." Consequently, liberals argued that the communitarian critique failed to rebut the core of liberal theory, serving instead as a potential corrective to more extreme doctrines like libertarianism, which more strictly embrace an atomized view of the individual.1