A Theory of Justice is a work of political philosophy and ethics by John Rawls. It was originally published in 1971 and revised in both 1975 (for the translated editions) and 1999. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to solve the problem of distributive justice (the socially just distribution of goods in a society) by utilising a variant of the familiar device of the social contract. The resultant theory is known as "Justice as Fairness", from which Rawls derives his two principles of justice: the liberty principle and the difference principle.

Objective[link]

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argues for a principled reconciliation of liberty and equality. Central to this effort is an account of the circumstances of justice, inspired by David Hume, and a fair choice situation for parties facing such circumstances, similar to some of Immanuel Kant's views. Principles of justice are sought to guide the conduct of the parties. These parties are recognized to face moderate scarcity, and they are neither naturally altruistic nor purely egoistic. They have ends which they seek to advance, but prefer to advance them through cooperation with others on mutually acceptable terms. Rawls offers a model of a fair choice situation (the original position with its veil of ignorance) within which parties would hypothetically choose mutually acceptable principles of justice. Under such constraints, Rawls believes that parties would find his favoured principles of justice to be especially attractive, winning out over varied alternatives, including utilitarian and libertarian accounts.

The “original position”[link]

Rawls belongs to the social contract tradition. However, Rawls' social contract takes a different view from that of previous thinkers. Specifically, Rawls develops what he claims are principles of justice through the use of an artificial device he calls the Original position in which everyone decides principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance. This "veil" is one that essentially blinds people to all facts about themselves that might cloud what their notion of justice is

"no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance."

According to Rawls, ignorance of these details about oneself will lead to principles that are fair to all. If an individual does not know how he will end up in his own conceived society, he is likely not going to privilege any one class of people, but rather develop a scheme of justice that treats all fairly. In particular, Rawls claims that those in the Original Position would all adopt a maximin strategy which would maximise the prospects of the least well-off.

They are the principles that rational and free persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamentals of the terms of their association [Rawls, p 11]

Rawls claims that the parties in the original position would adopt two such principles, which would then govern the assignment of rights and duties and regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages across society. The difference principle permits inequalities in the distribution of goods only if those inequalities benefit the worst-off members of society. Rawls believes that this principle would be a rational choice for the representatives in the original position for the following reason: Each member of society has an equal claim on their society’s goods. Natural attributes should not affect this claim, so the basic right of any individual, before further considerations are taken into account, must be to an equal share in material wealth. What, then, could justify unequal distribution? Rawls argues that inequality is acceptable only if it is to the advantage of those who are worst-off.

The agreement that stems from the original position is both hypothetical and ahistorical. It is hypothetical in the sense that the principles to be derived are what the parties would, under certain legitimating conditions, agree to, not what they have agreed to. Rawls seeks to use an argument that the principles of justice are what would be agree upon if people were in the hypothetical situation of the original position and that those principles have moral weight as a result of that. It is ahistorical in the sense that it is not supposed that the agreement has ever been, or indeed could ever have been, derived in the real world outside of carefully limited experimental exercises.

The First Principle of Justice[link]

The basic liberties of citizens are, the political liberty to vote and run for office, freedom of speech and assembly, liberty of conscience, freedom of personal property and freedom from arbitrary arrest. However, he says:

liberties not on the list, for example, the right to own certain kinds of property (e.g. means of production) and freedom of contract as understood by the doctrine of laissez-faire are not basic; and so they are not protected by the priority of the first principle.^[2]

The first principle may not be violated, even for the sake of the second principle, above an unspecified but low level of economic development. However, because various basic liberties may conflict, it may be necessary to trade them off against each other for the sake of obtaining the largest possible system of rights. There is thus some uncertainty as to exactly what is mandated by the principle, and it is possible that a plurality of sets of liberties satisfy its requirements.

The Second Principle of Justice[link]

Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (Rawls, 1971, p.303; revised edition, p. 47):

(a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle).

(b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity

Rawls' claim in (a) is that departures from equality of a list of what he calls primary goods—"things which a rational man wants whatever else he wants" [Rawls, 1971, pg. 92]—are justified only to the extent that they improve the lot of those who are worst-off under that distribution in comparison with the previous, equal, distribution. His position is at least in some sense egalitarian, with a proviso that equality is not to be achieved by worsening the position of the least advantaged. An important consequence here, however, is that inequalities can actually be just on Rawls' view, as long as they are to the benefit of the least well off. His argument for this position rests heavily on the claim that morally arbitrary factors (for example, the family one is born into) shouldn't determine one's life chances or opportunities. Rawls is also keying on an intuition that a person does not morally deserve their inborn talents; thus that one is not entitled to all the benefits they could possibly receive from them; hence, at least one of the criteria which could provide an alternative to equality in assessing the justice of distributions is eliminated.

The stipulation in (b) is lexically prior to that in (a). Fair equality of opportunity requires not merely that offices and positions are distributed on the basis of merit, but that all have reasonable opportunity to acquire the skills on the basis of which merit is assessed. It may be thought that this stipulation, and even the first principle of justice, may require greater equality than the difference principle, because large social and economic inequalities, even when they are to the advantage of the worst-off, will tend seriously to undermine the value of the political liberties and any measures towards fair equality of opportunity.

Relationship to Rawls' later work[link]

The original Theory of Justice, was an important but controversial and much criticized work of political philosophy. Although Rawls never retreated from the core argument of A Theory of Justice, he modified his theory substantially in subsequent works such as Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001), in which he clarified and re-organised much of the argument of A Theory of Justice.

Criticism[link]

In 1974, Rawls' colleague at Harvard, Robert Nozick, published a defense of libertarian justice, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.^[3] Because it is, in part, a critique of A Theory of Justice, the two books are now often read together.^{[citation needed]} Another Harvard colleague, Michael Walzer, wrote a defense of communitarian political philosophy, Spheres of Justice,^[4] as a result of a seminar he co-taught with Nozick. In a related line of criticism, Michael Sandel, also a Harvard colleague, wrote Liberalism and the Limits of Justice,^[5] which criticized A Theory of Justice for asking us to think about justice while divorced from the values and aspirations that define who we are as persons, and which allow us to determine what justice is.

Robert Paul Wolff wrote Understanding Rawls: A Critique and Reconstruction of A Theory of Justice,^[6] which criticized Rawls from a Marxist perspective, immediately following the publication of A Theory of Justice. Wolff argues in this work that Rawls' theory is an apology for the status quo insofar as it constructs justice from existing practice and forecloses the possibility that there may be problems of injustice embedded in capitalist social relations, private property or the market economy.

Feminist critics of Rawls, such as Susan Moller Okin,^[7] largely focused on weakness of Rawls' in accounting for the injustices and hierarchies embedded in familial relations. Rawls argued that justice ought only to apply to the "basic structure of society." Feminists, rallying around the theme of "the personal is political," took Rawls to task for failing to account for injustices found in patriarchal social relations and the gendered division of labor, especially in the household.

The assumptions of the original position, and in particular, the use of maximin reasoning, have also been criticized (most notably by Kenneth Arrow^[8] and John Harsanyi),^[9] with the implication either that Rawls designed the original position to derive the two principles, or that an original position more faithful to its initial purpose would not lead to his favored principles. In reply Rawls has emphasized the role of the original position as a "device of representation" for making sense of the idea of a fair choice situation for free and equal citizens.^[10] Rawls has also emphasized the relatively modest role that maximin plays in his argument: it is "a useful heuristic rule of thumb" given the curious features of choice behind the veil of ignorance.^[11]

Some egalitarian critics have raised concerns over Rawls' emphasis on primary social goods. For instance, Amartya Sen has argued that we should attend not only to the distribution of primary goods, but also how effectively people are able to use those goods to pursue their ends.^[12] In a related vein, Norman Daniels has wondered why healthcare shouldn't be treated as a primary good,^[13] and some of his subsequent work has addressed this question, arguing for a right to health care within a broadly Rawlsian framework.^[14]

Philosopher Allan Bloom, a student of Leo Strauss, criticized Rawls for failing to account for the existence of natural right in his theory of justice, and wrote that Rawls absolutizes social union as the ultimate goal which would conventionalize everything into artifice.^[15]

Other criticisms of Rawls' theory have come from the philosopher Gerald Cohen. Cohen's series of influential papers culminated first in his book, If You're An Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?^[16] and then in his later work, Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cohen's criticisms are leveled against Rawls' avowal of inequality under the difference principle, against his application of the principle only to social institutions, and against Rawlsian obsession with the using primary goods as his currency of equality.

Philosopher and Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, a former student of Rawls', critiques and attempts to revitalize A Theory of Justice in his 2009 book The Idea of Justice. He defends the basic notion of justice as fairness but attacks the notion that the two principles of justice emerging from the Original position are necessary. Sen claims that there are multiple possible outcomes of the reflective equilibrium behind the veil of ignorance.

See also[link]

• American philosophy
• John Stuart Mill
• Ken Binmore
• Lottery of birth
• Redistribution of wealth
• Social liberalism

References[link]

• Freeman, Samuel. "Rawls". New York: Routledge. 2007

Further reading[link]

• Thomas Nagel, "Rawls on Justice," The Philosophical Review, Vol. 82, No. 2. (Apr., 1973).

Lady Justice depicts justice as equipped with three symbols: a sword symbolizing the court's coercive power; a human scale weighing competing claims in each hand; and a blindfold indicating impartiality.^[1]

Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity. It is also the act of being just and/or fair.^{[2][not in citation given]}

Concept of justice[link]

According to most contemporary theories of justice, justice is overwhelmingly important: John Rawls claims that "Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought."^[3] Justice can be thought of as distinct from and more fundamental than benevolence, charity, mercy, generosity, or compassion. Justice has traditionally been associated with concepts of fate, reincarnation or Divine Providence, i.e. with a life in accordance with the cosmic plan. The association of justice with fairness has thus been historically and culturally rare and is perhaps chiefly a modern innovation [in western societies].^[4]

Studies at UCLA in 2008 have indicated that reactions to fairness are "wired" into the brain and that, "Fairness is activating the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats... This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need".^[5] Research conducted in 2003 at Emory University, Georgia, USA, involving Capuchin Monkeys demonstrated that other cooperative animals also possess such a sense and that "inequity aversion may not be uniquely human"^[6] indicating that ideas of fairness and justice may be instinctual in nature.

Variations of justice[link]

Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, where punishment is forward-looking. Justified by the ability to achieve future social benefits resulting in crime reduction, the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome.

Retributive justice regulates proportionate response to crime proven by lawful evidence, so that punishment is justly imposed and considered as morally correct and fully deserved. The law of retaliation (lex talionis) is a military theory of retributive justice, which says that reciprocity should be equal to the wrong suffered; "life for life, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."^[7]

Restorative justice is concerned not so much with retribution and punishment as with (a) making the victim whole and (b) reintegrating the offender into society. This approach frequently brings an offender and a victim together, so that the offender can better understand the effect his/her offense had on the victim.

Distributive justice is directed at the proper allocation of things — wealth, power, reward, respect — among different people.

Understandings of justice[link]

Justice by Luca Giordano

Understandings of justice differ in every culture, as cultures are usually dependent upon a shared history, mythology and/or religion. Each culture's ethics create values which influence the notion of justice. Although there can be found some justice principles that are one and the same in all or most of the cultures, these are insufficient to create a unitary justice apprehension.

Justice as harmony[link]

In his dialogue Republic, Plato uses Socrates to argue for justice that covers both the just person and the just City State. Justice is a proper, harmonious relationship between the warring parts of the person or city. Hence Plato's definition of justice is that justice is the having and doing of what is one's own. A just man is a man in just the right place, doing his best and giving the precise equivalent of what he has received. This applies both at the individual level and at the universal level. A person's soul has three parts – reason, spirit and desire. Similarly, a city has three parts – Socrates uses the parable of the chariot to illustrate his point: a chariot works as a whole because the two horses’ power is directed by the charioteer. Lovers of wisdom – philosophers, in one sense of the term – should rule because only they understand what is good. If one is ill, one goes to a doctor rather than a psychologist, because the doctor is expert in the subject of health. Similarly, one should trust one's city to an expert in the subject of the good, not to a mere politician who tries to gain power by giving people what they want, rather than what's good for them. Socrates uses the parable of the ship to illustrate this point: the unjust city is like a ship in open ocean, crewed by a powerful but drunken captain (the common people), a group of untrustworthy advisors who try to manipulate the captain into giving them power over the ship's course (the politicians), and a navigator (the philosopher) who is the only one who knows how to get the ship to port. For Socrates, the only way the ship will reach its destination – the good – is if the navigator takes charge.^[8]

Justice as divine command[link]

Justice as a divine law is commanding, and indeed the whole of morality, is the authoritative command. Killing is wrong and therefore must be punished and if not punished what should be done? A famous paradox called the Euthyphro dilemma essentially asks: is something right because God commands it, or does God command it because it's right? If the former, then justice is arbitrary; if the latter, then morality exists on a higher order than God, who becomes little more than a passer-on of moral knowledge. The dilemma is in fact false: goodness is the very nature of God and is necessarily expressed in His commands. Another response is that the laws and moral principles are objective and self evident in nature. God embodies these laws and is therefore neither higher nor lower than the law. He sets an example for the good people among men to follow His way and also become an embodiment of the highest principles and morals.

Justice as natural law[link]

For advocates of the theory that justice is part of natural law (e.g., John Locke), it involves the system of consequences that naturally derives from any action or choice. In this, it is similar to the laws of physics: in the same way as the Third of Newton's laws of Motion requires that for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction, justice requires according individuals or groups what they actually deserve, merit, or are entitled to. Justice, on this account, is a universal and absolute concept: laws, principles, religions, etc., are merely attempts to codify that concept, sometimes with results that entirely contradict the true nature of justice.

Justice as human creation[link]

In contrast to the understandings canvassed so far, justice may be understood as a human creation, rather than a discovery of harmony, divine command, or natural law. This claim can be understood in a number of ways, with the fundamental division being between those who argue that justice is the creation of some humans, and those who argue that it is the creation of all humans.

Justice as trickery[link]

In Republic by Plato, the character Thrasymachus argues that justice is the interest of the strong—merely a name for what the powerful or cunning ruler has imposed on the people.

Justice as mutual agreement[link]

According to thinkers in the social contract tradition, justice is derived from the mutual agreement of everyone concerned; or, in many versions, from what they would agree to under hypothetical conditions including equality and absence of bias. This account is considered further below, under ‘Justice as fairness’.

Justice as a subordinate value[link]

According to utilitarian thinkers including John Stuart Mill, justice is not as fundamental as we often think. Rather, it is derived from the more basic standard of rightness, consequentialism: what is right is what has the best consequences (usually measured by the total or average welfare caused). So, the proper principles of justice are those that tend to have the best consequences. These rules may turn out to be familiar ones such as keeping contracts; but equally, they may not, depending on the facts about real consequences. Either way, what is important is those consequences, and justice is important, if at all, only as derived from that fundamental standard. Mill tries to explain our mistaken belief that justice is overwhelmingly important by arguing that it derives from two natural human tendencies: our desire to retaliate against those who hurt us, and our ability to put ourselves imaginatively in another's place. So, when we see someone harmed, we project ourselves into her situation and feel a desire to retaliate on her behalf. If this process is the source of our feelings about justice, that ought to undermine our confidence in them.^[9]

Theories of distributive justice[link]

Allegory or The Triumph of Justice by Hans von Aachen

Theories of distributive justice need to answer three questions:

1. What goods are to be distributed? Is it to be wealth, power, respect, some combination of these things?
2. Between what entities are they to be distributed? Humans (dead, living, future), sentient beings, the members of a single society, nations?
3. What is the proper distribution? Equal, meritocratic, according to social status, according to need, based on property rights and non-aggression?

Distributive justice theorists generally do not answer questions of who has the right to enforce a particular favored distribution. On the other hand, property rights theorists argue that there is no "favored distribution." Rather, distribution should be based simply on whatever distribution results from non-coerced interactions or transactions (that is, transactions not based upon force or fraud).

This section describes some widely held theories of distributive justice, and their attempts to answer these questions.

Egalitarianism[link]

According to the egalitarian, justice can only exist within the coordinates of equality. This basic view can be elaborated in many different ways, according to what goods are to be distributed—wealth, respect, opportunity—and what they are to be distributed equally between—individuals, families, nations, races, species. Commonly held egalitarian positions include demands for equality of opportunity and for equality of outcome. It affirms that freedom and justice without equality are hollow and that equality itself is the highest justice.

At a cultural level, egalitarian theories have developed in sophistication and acceptance during the past two hundred years. Among the notable broadly egalitarian philosophies are socialism, communism, anarchism, left-libertarianism, and progressivism, all of which propound economic, political, and legal egalitarianism, respectively. Several egalitarian ideas enjoy wide support among intellectuals and in the general populations of many countries. Whether any of these ideas have been significantly implemented in practice, however, remains a controversial question. One argument is that liberalism provides democracy with the experience of civic reformism. Without it, democracy loses any tie─argumentative or practical─to a coherent design of public policy endeavoring to provide the resources for the realization of democratic citizenship.

Giving people what they deserve[link]

In one sense, all theories of distributive justice claim that everyone should get what they deserve. Theories disagree on the basis for deserving. The main distinction is between theories that argue the basis of just deserts is held equally by everyone, and therefore derive egalitarian accounts of distributive justice—and theories that argue the basis of just deserts is unequally distributed on the basis of, for instance, hard work, and therefore derive accounts of distributive justice by which some should have more than others. This section deals with some popular theories of the second type.

According to meritocratic theories, goods, especially wealth and social status, should be distributed to match individual merit, which is usually understood as some combination of talent and hard work. According to needs-based theories, goods, especially such basic goods as food, shelter and medical care, should be distributed to meet individuals' basic needs for them. Marxism can be regarded as a needs-based theory on some readings of Marx's slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".^[10] According to contribution-based theories, goods should be distributed to match an individual's contribution to the overall social good.

Fairness[link]

J. L. Urban, statue of Lady Justice at court building in Olomouc, Czech Republic

In his A Theory of Justice, John Rawls used a social contract argument to show that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness: an impartial distribution of goods. Rawls asks us to imagine ourselves behind a veil of ignorance that denies us all knowledge of our personalities, social statuses, moral characters, wealth, talents and life plans, and then asks what theory of justice we would choose to govern our society when the veil is lifted, if we wanted to do the best that we could for ourselves. We don’t know who in particular we are, and therefore can’t bias the decision in our own favour. So, the decision-in-ignorance models fairness, because it excludes selfish bias. Rawls argues that each of us would reject the utilitarian theory of justice that we should maximize welfare (see below) because of the risk that we might turn out to be someone whose own good is sacrificed for greater benefits for others. Instead, we would endorse Rawls's two principles of justice:

• Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
• Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both
  • to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and
  • attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.^[11]

This imagined choice justifies these principles as the principles of justice for us, because we would agree to them in a fair decision procedure. Rawls's theory distinguishes two kinds of goods – (1) liberties and (2) social and economic goods, i.e. wealth, income and power – and applies different distributions to them – equality between citizens for (1), equality unless inequality improves the position of the worst off for (2).

Property rights (non-coercion); having the right history[link]

Robert Nozick's influential critique of Rawls argues that distributive justice is not a matter of the whole distribution matching an ideal pattern, but of each individual entitlement having the right kind of history. It is just that a person has some good (especially, some property right) if and only if they came to have it by a history made up entirely of events of two kinds:

1. Just acquisition, especially by working on unowned things; and

2. Just transfer, that is free gift, sale or other agreement, but not theft (i.e. by force or fraud).

If the chain of events leading up to the person having something meets this criterion, they are entitled to it: that they possess it is just, and what anyone else does or doesn't have or need is irrelevant.

On the basis of this theory of distributive justice, Nozick argues that all attempts to redistribute goods according to an ideal pattern, without the consent of their owners, are theft. In particular, redistributive taxation is theft.

Some property rights theorists also take a consequentialist view of distributive justice and argue that property rights based justice also has the effect of maximizing the overall wealth of an economic system. They explain that voluntary (non-coerced) transactions always have a property called pareto efficiency. A pareto efficient transaction is one where at least one party ends up better off and neither party ends up worse off. The result is that the world is better off in an absolute sense and no one is worse off. Such consequentialist property rights theorists argue that respecting property rights maximizes the number of pareto efficient transactions in the world and minimized the number of non-pareto efficient transactions in the world (i.e. transactions where someone is made worse off). The result is that the world will have generated the greatest total benefit from the limited, scarce resources available in the world. Further, this will have been accomplished without taking anything away from anyone by coercion.

Welfare-maximization[link]

According to the utilitarian, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. This may require sacrifice of some for the good of others, so long as everyone's good is taken impartially into account. Utilitarianism, in general, argues that the standard of justification for actions, institutions, or the whole world, is impartial welfare consequentialism, and only indirectly, if at all, to do with rights, property, need, or any other non-utilitarian criterion. These other criteria might be indirectly important, to the extent that human welfare involves them. But even then, such demands as human rights would only be elements in the calculation of overall welfare, not uncrossable barriers to action.

Theories of sentencing[link]

In criminal law, a sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine and/or other punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime. Laws may specify the range of penalties that can be imposed for various offenses, and sentencing guidelines sometimes regulate what punishment within those ranges can be imposed given a certain set of offense and offender characteristics. The most common purposes of sentencing in legal theory are:

In civil cases the decision is usually known as a verdict, or judgment, rather than a sentence. Civil cases are settled primarily by means of monetary compensation for harm done ("damages") and orders intended to prevent future harm (for example injunctions). Under some legal systems an award of damages involves some scope for retribution, denunciation and deterrence, by means of additional categories of damages beyond simple compensation, covering a punitive effect, social disapprobation, and potentially, deterrence, and occasionally disgorgement (forfeit of any gain, even if no loss was caused to the other party).

Theories of retributive justice[link]

Walter Seymour Allward's Justicia (Justice), outside Supreme Court of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Theories of retributive justice are concerned with punishment for wrongdoing, and need to answer three questions:

1. why punish?
2. who should be punished?
3. what punishment should they receive?

This section considers the two major accounts of retributive justice, and their answers to these questions. Utilitarian theories look forward to the future consequences of punishment, while retributive theories look back to particular acts of wrongdoing, and attempt to balance them with deserved punishment.

Utilitarianism[link]

According to the utilitarian, as already noted, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. Punishment is bad treatment of someone, and therefore can't be good in itself, for the utilitarian. But punishment might be a necessary sacrifice that maximizes the overall good in the long term, in one or more of three ways:

1. Deterrence. The credible threat of punishment might lead people to make different choices; well-designed threats might lead people to make choices that maximize welfare.
2. Rehabilitation. Punishment might make bad people into better ones. For the utilitarian, all that 'bad person' can mean is 'person who's likely to cause bad things (like suffering)'. So, utilitarianism could recommend punishment that changes someone such that they are less likely to cause bad things.
3. Security/Incapacitation. Perhaps there are people who are irredeemable causers of bad things. If so, imprisoning them might maximize welfare by limiting their opportunities to cause harm and therefore the benefit lies within protecting society.

So, the reason for punishment is the maximization of welfare, and punishment should be of whomever, and of whatever form and severity, are needed to meet that goal. Worryingly, this may sometimes justify punishing the innocent, or inflicting disproportionately severe punishments, when that will have the best consequences overall (perhaps executing a few suspected shoplifters live on television would be an effective deterrent to shoplifting, for instance). It also suggests that punishment might turn out never to be right, depending on the facts about what actual consequences it has.^[12]

Retributivism[link]

The retributivist will think the utilitarian's argument disastrously mistaken. If someone does something wrong, we must respond to it, and to him or her, as an individual, not as a part of a calculation of overall welfare. To do otherwise is to disrespect him or her as an individual human being. If the crime had victims, it is to disrespect them, too. Wrongdoing must be balanced or made good in some way, and so the criminal deserves to be punished. Retributivism emphasizes retribution – payback – rather than maximization of welfare. Like the theory of distributive justice as giving everyone what they deserve (see above), it links justice with desert. It says that all guilty people, and only guilty people, deserve appropriate punishment. This matches some strong intuitions about just punishment: that it should be proportional to the crime, and that it should be of only and all of the guilty. However, it is sometimes argued that retributivism is merely revenge in disguise.^[13] However, there are differences between retribution and revenge: the former is impartial and has a scale of appropriateness, whereas the latter is personal and potentially unlimited in scale.

Restorative justice[link]

Restorative justice (also sometimes called "reparative justice") is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of victims and offenders, instead of satisfying abstract legal principles or punishing the offender. Victims take an active role in the process, while offenders are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, "to repair the harm they've done—by apologizing, returning stolen money, or community service". It is based on a theory of justice that considers crime and wrongdoing to be an offense against an individual or community rather than the state. Restorative justice that fosters dialogue between victim and offender shows the highest rates of victim satisfaction and offender accountability.

Mixed theories[link]

Some modern philosophers have argued that Utilitarian and Retributive theories are not mutually exclusive. For example, Andrew Von Hirsch, in his 1976 book Doing Justice, suggested that we have a moral obligation to punish greater crimes more than lesser ones. However, so long as we adhere to that constraint then utilitarian ideals would play a significant secondary role.

Evolutionary perspectives[link]

Evolutionary ethics and an argued evolution of morality suggest evolutionary bases for the concept of justice. Biosocial criminology research argues that human perceptions of what is appropriate criminal justice are based on how to respond to crimes in the ancestral small-group environment and that these responses may not always be appropriate for today's societies.

Institutions[link]

The Justices of the United States Supreme Court with President George W. Bush, October 2005

In a world where people are interconnected but they disagree, institutions are required to instantiate ideals of justice. These institutions may be justified by their approximate instantiation of justice, or they may be deeply unjust when compared with ideal standards — consider the institution of slavery. Justice is an ideal the world fails to live up to, sometimes despite good intentions, sometimes disastrously. The question of institutive justice raises issues of legitimacy, procedure, codification and interpretation, which are considered by legal theorists and by philosophers of law.

Another definition of justice is an independent investigation of truth. In a court room, lawyers, the judge and the jury are supposed to be independently investigating the truth of an alleged crime. In physics, a group of physicists examine data and theoretical concepts to consult on what might be the truth or reality of a phenomenon.

See also[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Anthony Duff & David Garland eds, A Reader on Punishment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
• Barzilai Gad, Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003)
• Brian Barry, Theories of Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)
• C. L. Ten, Crime, Guilt, and Punishment: A philosophical introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)
• Colin Farrelly, An Introduction to Contemporary Political Theory (London: Sage, 2004)
• David Gauthier, Morals By Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)
• James Konow (2003) "Which Is the Fairest One of All? A Positive Analysis of Justice Theories", Journal of Economic Literature, 41(4), p. 1188-1239
• David Schmidtz, Elements of Justice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)
• Harry Brighouse, Justice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004)
• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (revised edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism in On Liberty and Other Essays ed. John Gray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)
• Nicola Lacey, State Punishment (London: Routledge, 1988)
• Peter Singer ed., A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), Part IV
• Plato, Republic trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
• Robert E. Goodin & Philip Pettit eds, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An anthology (2nd edition, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2006), Part III
• Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974)
• Serge Guinchard, La justice et ses institutions (Judicial institutions), Dalloz editor, 10 edition, 2009
• Ted Honderich, Punishment: The supposed justifications (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1969)
• Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An introduction (2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Justice

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries:
  • Distributive justice, by Julian Lamont
  • Justice as a virtue, by Michael Slote
  • Punishment, by Hugo Adam Bedau
• Justice for the World
• United Nations Rule of Law: Informal Justice, on the relationship between informal/community justice, the rule of law and the United Nations
• Video:Balkan Justice YouTube

• A series of videos on the subject of justice:
  • Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? by Harvard University's Michael Sandel. This is a wonderful series on this subject and from this site you are referred to all 12 episodes as well as to reading materials and comments from participants.

John Bordley Rawls (February 21, 1921 - November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University.

His magnum opus, A Theory of Justice (1971), was hailed at the time of its publication as "the most important work in moral philosophy since the end of World War II,"^[1] and is now regarded as "one of the primary texts in political philosophy."^[2] His work in political philosophy, dubbed Rawlsianism,^[3] takes as its starting point the argument that "most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position."^[2] Rawls employs a number of thought experiments — including the famous veil of ignorance — to determine what constitutes a fair agreement in which "everyone is impartially situated as equals," in order to determine principles of social justice.^[2] He is one of the major thinkers in the tradition of liberal political philosophy.^{[citation needed]} English philosopher Jonathan Wolff argues that "while there might be a dispute about the second most important political philosopher of the 20th century, there could be no dispute about the most important: John Rawls. His student Samuel Freeman says that Rawls’s work will be recognized 'for centuries to come.'"^[1]

Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999, the latter presented by President Bill Clinton, in recognition of how Rawls' work "helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive their faith in democracy itself."^[4]

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

John Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland to William Lee Rawls, "one of the most prominent attorneys in Baltimore,"^[1] and Anna Abell Stump Rawls,^[5] the second of five sons. Tragedy struck Rawls at a young age. "Two of his brothers died in childhood because they had contracted fatal illnesses from him. . . . In 1928, the 7-year-old Rawls contracted diphtheria. His brother Bobby, younger by 20 months, visited him in his room and was fatally infected. The next winter, Rawls contracted pneumonia. Another younger brother, Tommy, caught the illness from him and died."^[1] Rawls biographer Thomas Pogge calls the loss of the brothers the "most important events in Jack’s childhood.”^[1]

Rawls attended school in Baltimore for a short time before transferring to Kent School, an Episcopalian preparatory school in Connecticut. Upon graduation in 1939, Rawls attended Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude and was accepted into The Ivy Club and the American Whig-Cliosophic Society^[6]. During his last two years at Princeton he "became deeply concerned with theology and its doctrines". He considered attending a seminary to study for the Episcopal priesthood.^[7]

In 1943, he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree and immediately enlisted in the Army.^[5] During World War II, Rawls served as an infantryman in the Pacific, where he toured New Guinea, the Philippines, and occupied Japan;^[5] There, he witnessed the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. After this experience, Rawls turned down an offer to become an officer and left the army as a private in 1946. Shortly thereafter, he returned to Princeton to pursue a doctorate in moral philosophy.

Rawls married Margaret Fox, a Brown University graduate, in 1949.^[5]

Career[link]

After earning his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1950, Rawls taught there until 1952, when he received a Fulbright Fellowship to Oxford University (Christ Church), where he was influenced by the liberal political theorist and historian Isaiah Berlin and the legal theorist H. L. A. Hart. After returning to the United States, he served first as an assistant and then associate professor at Cornell University. In 1962, he became a full professor of philosophy at Cornell, and soon achieved a tenured position at MIT. That same year, he moved to Harvard University, where he taught for almost forty years, and where he trained some of the leading contemporary figures in moral and political philosophy, including Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, Onora O'Neill, Adrian Piper, Christine Korsgaard, Susan Neiman, Claudia Card, Thomas Pogge, T.M. Scanlon, Barbara Herman, Joshua Cohen, Thomas E. Hill, Jr. and Paul Weithman.

Later life[link]

Rawls seldom gave interviews and, having a "bat-like horror of the limelight",^[8] did not become a public intellectual despite his fame. He instead remained committed mainly to his academic and family life.^[8]

In 1995 he suffered the first of several strokes, severely impeding his ability to continue to work. He was nevertheless able to complete a book entitled The Law of Peoples, the most complete statement of his views on international justice, and shortly before his death in November 2002 published Justice As Fairness: A Restatement, a response to criticisms of A Theory of Justice.

Contribution to political and moral philosophy[link]

Rawls is noted for his contributions to liberal political philosophy. Among the ideas from Rawls' work that have received wide attention are:

• Justice as Fairness (comprising the Liberty Principle, Fair Equality of Opportunity, and the Difference Principle.)
• The original position
• Reflective equilibrium
• Overlapping consensus
• Public reason
• Veil of ignorance
• Political constructivism

There is general agreement in academia that the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971 was important to a revival, following its release, in the academic study of political philosophy. His work has crossed disciplinary lines, receiving serious attention from economists, legal scholars, political scientists, sociologists, healthcare resource allocators, and theologians. Rawls has the unique distinction among contemporary political philosophers of being frequently cited by the courts of law in the United States and Canada^[9] and referred to by practicing politicians in the United States and United Kingdom.^[10]

Philosophical thought[link]

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to reconcile freedom and equality in a principled way, offering an account of "justice as fairness". Central to this effort is his famous approach to the seemingly intractable problem of distributive justice.

Justice as Fairness[link]

Contractarianism[link]

Rawls utilizes the social contract device, asking what principles of justice would individuals agree to when designing society. Justice as fairness offers an account of human nature beyond the traditions of saintly altruists or greedy egoists: human beings are to Rawls both rational and reasonable. Because we are rational we have ends we want to achieve, but we are reasonable insofar as we are happy to achieve these ends cooperatively if possible by adhering to mutually acceptable regulatory principles. Individuals hold, however, quite different needs and aspirations of individuals: the individual conception of the good.

Original Position[link]

Rawls proposes a thought-experiment to overcome this, his famous argument from the original position which includes the veil of ignorance. Rawls proposes a set of Principles of Justice to be established through a thought-experiment, a kind of modern replacement for the philosophical state of nature. Basically, Rawls lets us imagine a situation where people are unaware of their own characteristics which may make given principles advantageous or disadvantageous to themselves:

"...no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like." (Rawls, A Theory of Justice)

Through this veil of ignorance, people may then agree upon principles of justice independently of personal interests, meaning impartially and rationally. Those collectively decided principles should thus be socially fair.

Principles of Justice[link]

The first of these principles is the Liberty Principle, establishing equal basic liberties for all citizens. 'Basic' liberty entails the (familiar in the liberal tradition) freedoms of conscience, association, and expression as well as democratic rights; Rawls also includes a personal property right, but this is defended in terms of moral capacities and self-respect,^[11] rather than an appeal to a natural right of self-ownership (this distinguishes Rawls' account from the classical liberalism of John Locke and the libertarianism of Robert Nozick).

Rawls argues that a second principle of equality would be agreed upon to guarantee liberties that represent meaningful options for all in society and ensure distributive justice. For example, formal guarantees of political voice and freedom of assembly are of little real worth to the desperately poor and marginalized in society. Demanding that everyone have exactly the same effective opportunities in life would almost certainly offend the very liberties that are supposedly being equalized. Nonetheless, we would want to ensure at least the "fair worth" of our liberties: wherever one ends up in society, one wants life to be worth living, with enough effective freedom to pursue personal goals. Thus participants would be moved to affirm a two-part second principle comprising Fair Equality of Opportunity and the famous (and controversial^{[citation needed]}) difference principle. This second principle ensures that those with comparable talents and motivation face roughly similar life chances and that inequalities in society work to the benefit of the least advantaged.

Rawls held that these principles of justice apply to the "basic structure" of fundamental social institutions (such as the judiciary, the economic structure, the political constitution), a qualification that has been the source of some controversy and constructive debate (see, for instance, the important work of Gerald Cohen).

Rawls further argued that these principles were to be 'lexically ordered' to award priority to basic liberties over the more equality-oriented demands of the second principle. This has also been a topic of much debate among moral and political philosophers.

Finally, Rawls took his approach as applying in the first instance to what he called a "well-ordered society ... designed to advance the good of its members and effectively regulated by a public conception of justice".^[12] In this respect, he understood justice as fairness as a contribution to "ideal theory", the determination of "principles that characterize a well-ordered society under favorable circumstances".^[13] Much recent work in political philosophy has asked what justice as fairness might dictate (or indeed, whether it is very useful at all) for problems of "partial compliance" under "nonideal theory."

[edit] Political Liberalism

Rawls' later work focused on the question of stability: could a society ordered by the two principles of justice endure? His answer to this question is contained in a collection of lectures titled Political Liberalism. In these lectures, Rawls introduced the idea of an overlapping consensus — or agreement on justice as fairness between citizens who hold different religious and philosophical views (or conceptions of the good). Political Liberalism also introduced the idea of public reason — the common reason of all citizens.

In Political Liberalism Rawls addressed the most common criticism levelled at A Theory of Justice — the criticism that the principles of justice were simply an alternative systematic conception of justice that was not superior to utilitarianism or any other comprehensive theory. Critics viewed "justice as fairness" as simply another reasonable, comprehensive doctrine that was incompatible with other reasonable doctrines. In their view it failed to distinguish between a comprehensive moral theory which addressed the problem of justice and a political conception of justice that was independent of any comprehensive theory.

To address this charge Rawls introduces the political conception of justice that people with conflicting, but reasonable, metaphysical and/or religious views would accept to regulate the basic structure of society. What distinguishes Rawls' account from previous conceptions of liberalism is that it seeks to arrive at a consensus without appealing to any one metaphysical source - hence the idea of "political liberalism," contrary to John Locke or John Stuart Mill, who promote a more robust cultural and metaphysical liberal philosophy. Rawls' account is an attempt to secure the possibility of a liberal consensus regardless of the "deep" religious or metaphysical values that the parties endorse (so long as these remain open to compromise, i.e., are "reasonable"). The ideal result is therefore conceived as an "overlapping consensus" because different and often conflicting accounts of morality, nature, etc. are intended to "overlap" with each other on the question of governance.

Rawls also modified the principles of justice as follows (with the first principle having priority over the second, and the first half of the second having priority over the latter half):

1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

These principles are subtly modified from the principles in Theory. The first principle now reads "equal claim" instead of "equal right," and he also replaces the phrase "system of basic liberties" with "a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties." More notably though, he switches the two parts of the second principle, so that the difference principle becomes the latter of the three.

[edit] The Law of Peoples

Although there were passing comments on international affairs in A Theory of Justice, it wasn't until late in his career that Rawls formulated a comprehensive theory of international politics with the publication of The Law of Peoples. He claimed there that "well-ordered" peoples could be either "liberal" or "decent." Rawls argued that the legitimacy of a liberal international order is contingent on tolerating decent peoples, which differ from liberal peoples, among other ways, in that they might have state religions and deny adherents of minority faiths the right to hold positions of power within the state, and might organize political participation via consultation hierarchies rather than elections. However, no well-ordered peoples may violate human rights or behave in an externally aggressive manner. Peoples that fail to meet the criteria of "liberal" or "decent" peoples are referred to as "outlaw states," "societies burdened by unfavourable conditions" or "benevolent absolutisms" depending on their particular failings. Such peoples do not have the right to mutual respect and toleration possessed by liberal and decent peoples.

Rawls' views on global distributive justice as they were expressed in this work surprised many of his fellow egalitarian liberals. Charles Beitz, for instance, had previously written a study that argued for the application of Rawls' Difference Principles globally. Rawls denied that his principles should be so applied, partly on the grounds that states, unlike citizens, were self-sufficient in the cooperative enterprises that constitute domestic societies. Although Rawls recognized that aid should be given to governments who are unable to protect human rights for economic reasons, he claimed that the purpose for this aid is not to achieve an eventual state of global equality, but rather only to ensure that these societies could maintain liberal or decent political institutions. He argued, among other things, that continuing to give aid indefinitely would see nations with industrious populations subsidize those with idle populations and would create a moral hazard problem where governments could spend irresponsibly in the knowledge that they will be bailed out by those nations who had spent responsibly.

Rawls' discussion of "non-ideal" theory, on the other hand, included a condemnation of bombing civilians and of the American bombing of German and Japanese cities in World War II, as well as discussions of immigration and nuclear proliferation. Rawls also detailed here the ideal of the statesman, a political leader who looks to the next generation and promotes international harmony, even in the face of significant domestic pressure to do otherwise. Rawls also claimed, controversially, that violations of human rights can legitimize military intervention in the violating states, though he also expressed the hope that such societies could be induced to reform peacefully by the good example of liberal and decent peoples.

Publications[link]

Bibliography[link]

• A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. The revised edition of 1999 incorporates changes that Rawls made for translated editions of A Theory of Justice. Some Rawls scholars use the abbreviation TJ to refer to this work.
• Political Liberalism. The John Dewey Essays in Philosophy, 4. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. The hardback edition published in 1993 is not identical. The paperback adds a valuable new introduction and an essay titled "Reply to Habermas." Some Rawls scholars use the abbreviation PL to refer to this work.
• The Law of Peoples: with "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited." Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. This slim book includes two works; a further development of his essay entitled "The Law of Peoples" and another entitled "Public Reason Revisited", both published earlier in his career.
• Collected Papers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. This collection of shorter papers was edited by Samuel Freeman.
• Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2000. This collection of lectures was edited by Barbara Herman. It has an introduction on modern moral philosophy from 1600–1800 and then lectures on Hume, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel.
• Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2001. This shorter summary of the main arguments of Rawls' political philosophy was edited by Erin Kelly. Many versions of this were circulated in typescript and much of the material was delivered by Rawls in lectures when he taught courses covering his own work at Harvard University.
• Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007. Collection of lectures on Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Joseph Butler, J.J. Rousseau, David Hume, J.S. Mill, and Karl Marx, edited by Samuel Freeman.
• A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2010. With introduction and commentary by Thomas Nagel, Joshua Cohen, and Robert Merrihew Adams. Senior thesis, Princeton, 1942. This volume includes a brief late essay by Rawls entitled On My Religion.

Articles[link]

• "A Study in the Grounds of Ethical Knowledge: Considered with Reference to Judgments on the Moral Worth of Character." Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1950.
• "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics." Philosophical Review (April 1951), 60 (2): 177-197.
• "Two Concepts of Rules." Philosophical Review (January 1955), 64 (1):3-32.
• "Justice as Fairness." Journal of Philosophy (October 24, 1957), 54 (22): 653-662.
• "Justice as Fairness." Philosophical Review (April 1958), 67 (2): 164-194.
• "The Sense of Justice." Philosophical Review (July 1963), 72 (3): 281-305.
• "Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice" Nomos VI (1963) (in the notes to the second volume of his Law, Legislation and Liberty, Hayek refers to this article to show that Rawls agreed with the Lockean conception that what could be just or unjust was the way competition was carried on, not its results)
• "Distributive Justice: Some Addenda." Natural Law Forum (1968), 13: 51-71.
• "Reply to Lyons and Teitelman." Journal of Philosophy (October 5, 1972), 69 (18): 556-557.
• "Reply to Alexander and Musgrave." Quarterly Journal of Economics (November 1974), 88 (4): 633-655.
• "Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion." American Economic Review (May 1974), 64 (2): 141-146.
• "Fairness to Goodness." Philosophical Review (October 1975), 84 (4): 536-554.
• "The Independence of Moral Theory." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (November 1975), 48: 5-22.
• "A Kantian Conception of Equality." Cambridge Review (February 1975), 96 (2225): 94-99.
• "The Basic Structure as Subject." American Philosophical Quarterly (April 1977), 14 (2): 159-165.
• "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory." Journal of Philosophy (September 1980), 77 (9): 515-572.
• "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical." Philosophy & Public Affairs (Summer 1985), 14 (3): 223-251.
• "The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus." Oxford Journal for Legal Studies (Spring 1987), 7 (1): 1-25.
• "The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good." Philosophy & Public Affairs (Fall 1988), 17 (4): 251-276.
• "The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus." New York University Law Review (May 1989), 64 (2): 233-255.
• "Roderick Firth: His Life and Work." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (March 1991), 51 (1): 109-118.
• "The Law of Peoples." Critical Inquiry (Fall 1993), 20 (1): 36-68.
• "Political Liberalism: Reply to Habermas." Journal of Philosophy (March 1995), 92 (3):132-180.
• "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," Chicago Law Review (1997), 64 (3): 765-807. [PRR]

Book chapters[link]

• "Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice." In Carl J. Friedrich and John W. Chapman, eds., Nomos, VI: Justice, pp. 98–125. Yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. New York: Atherton Press, 1963.
• "Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play." In Sidney Hook, ed., Law and Philosophy: A Symposium, pp. 3–18. New York: New York University Press, 1964. Proceedings of the 6th Annual New York University Institute of Philosophy.
• "Distributive Justice." In Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman, eds., Philosophy, Politics, and Society. Third Series, pp. 58–82. London: Blackwell; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967.
• "The Justification of Civil Disobedience." In Hugo Adam Bedau, ed., Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice, pp. 240–255. New York: Pegasus Books, 1969.
• "Justice as Reciprocity." In Samuel Gorovitz, ed., Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill: With Critical Essays, pp. 242–268. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971.
• "Author's Note." In Thomas Schwartz, ed., Freedom and Authority: An Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy, p. 260. Encino & Belmont, California: Dickenson, 1973.
• "Distributive Justice." In Edmund S. Phelps, ed., Economic Justice: Selected Readings, pp. 319–362. Penguin Modern Economics Readings. Harmondsworth & Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973.
• "Personal Communication, January 31, 1976." In Thomas Nagel's "The Justification of Equality." Critica (April 1978), 10 (28): 9n4.
• "The Basic Liberties and Their Priority." In Sterling M. McMurrin, ed., The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, III (1982), pp. 1–87. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
• "Social Unity and Primary Goods." In Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond, pp. 159–185. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1982.
• "Themes in Kant's Moral Philosophy." In Eckhart Forster, ed., Kant's Transcendental Deductions: The Three Critiques and the Opus postumum, pp. 81–113, 253-256. Stanford Series in Philosophy. Studies in Kant and German Idealism. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1989.

Reviews[link]

• Review of Axel Hägerström's Inquiries into the Nature of Law and Morals (C.D. Broad, tr.). Mind (July 1955), 64 (255):421-422.
• Review of Stephen Toulmin's An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (1950). Philosophical Review (October 1951), 60 (4): 572-580.
• Review of A. Vilhelm Lundstedt's Legal Thinking Revised. Cornell Law Quarterly (1959), 44: 169.
• Review of Raymond Klibansky, ed., Philosophy in Mid-Century: A Survey. Philosophical Review (January 1961), 70 (1): 131-132.
• Review of Richard B. Brandt, ed., Social Justice (1962). Philosophical Review (July 1965), 74(3): 406-409.

Awards and honors[link]

• Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy (1999)
• National Humanities Medal (1999)
• Asteroid 16561 Rawls is named in his honor.

See also[link]

• Anarchy, State, and Utopia
• List of American philosophers
• List of liberal theorists
• Philosophy of economics

References[link]

Works cited[link]

• Freeman, S. (2007) Rawls (Routledge, Abingdon)
• Freeman, Samuel (2009) "Original Position" (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [1])
• Rawls, J. (1993/1996/2005) Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press, New York)
• Rawls, J. (1971/1999) A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA)
• Rawls, J. (2001) Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Belknap Press, Cambridge MA)
• Rogers, B. (27.09.02) "Obituary: John Rawls" [2]
• Tampio, N. (2011) "A Defense of Political Constructivism" (Contemporary Political Theory, [3])
• Wenar, Leif (2008) "John Rawls" (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [4])

Reference list[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Rawls

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on John Rawls by Leif Wenar
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Original Position by Fred D'Agostino
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Reflective Equilibrium by Norman Daniels
• Jurgen Habermas' critique of John Rawls, 2003.