09 Rawls and Justice as Fairness

Rawls’s account of justice

John Rawls (1921–2002) developed justice as fairness to identify fair principles for the basic structure of a democratic society: its major political, legal, and economic institutions. In A Theory of Justice (1971), he revived social-contract reasoning by asking what principles people would choose under fair conditions, rather than claiming that such an agreement had occurred historically.

Choosing principles impartially

The original position is a thought experiment in which representatives choose principles to govern society. They know general facts about human needs, social life, and economics, but not the particular identities or circumstances of the people they represent.

This restriction is the veil of ignorance. Representatives do not know the class, wealth, race, gender, abilities, or religion of those they represent, nor their personal conception of a good life. The restriction is intended to prevent them from designing rules to favor their own position.

For example, someone choosing rules without knowing whether they will be wealthy or poor has reason to consider whether everyone will have meaningful rights and opportunities, and whether people at the bottom will be protected. The original position models impartial reasoning; it is not a claim that actual citizens once made such an agreement.

The principles and their priorities

Rawls argues that representatives in the original position would choose two principles of justice, ordered by priority.

1. Equal basic liberties: Each person is to have an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic liberties, compatible with the same liberties for all. These include political participation, freedom of thought and conscience, speech and association, personal liberty, and legal protections. Basic liberties cannot be traded away merely to increase wealth or overall social welfare.

2. Fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle: Social and economic inequalities must meet two conditions. Offices and positions must be open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and inequalities must work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

There is a priority order within the second principle: fair equality of opportunity comes before the difference principle. The difference principle does not require identical incomes. It permits inequality when the arrangements producing it improve the prospects of the least advantaged compared with feasible alternatives.

For instance, higher pay for some jobs could be acceptable if the resulting system also improves the life prospects of those with the fewest advantages and access to those jobs is genuinely fair.

The theory’s significance

Rawls treats citizens as free and equal and asks whether society’s rules could be justified to them on fair terms. Justice as fairness provides a standard for assessing institutions, not a detailed policy blueprint.

His work transformed modern moral and political philosophy, stimulated debate in fields including law, economics, and political science, and prompted influential challenges and revisions. In his later work on political liberalism, Rawls addressed how citizens with different religious and moral beliefs might support shared political principles.

The account connects individual rights and democratic equality with a demanding test for social and economic institutions: basic liberties must be protected, opportunities must be fair, and inequalities are permitted only when they benefit the least advantaged.