A Theory of Justice

The two principles of justice are the equal liberty principle and the difference principle. These apply to both individuals and the institutions that govern society.

All basic liberties are equal under the first principle of justice. They include political liberty, freedom of speech and assembly, liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, freedom of the person, the right to hold personal property, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure. The second principle governs the distribution of income and wealth, and the design of institutions that assign different authorities and responsibilities in society.

The priority principle dictates that the first principle is given greater priority than the second principle, the result being that “infringements of the basic equal liberties protected by the first principle cannot be justified, or compensated for, by greater social and economic advantages” distributed by the second principle (53).

Basic liberties guaranteed by the first principle can be limited and compromised only when they conflict with other basic liberties. Distribution of income and wealth by the second principle must comply with the basic liberties and equality of opportunity. Further, all social values should be distributed equally, unless an unequal distribution is to everyone’s advantage. For example, if there are five people in a society, and one of these people is the leader, and all five people agree the leader should get more wealth due to leading, then an inequality of distribution would be warranted.

Three interpretations of the two principles exist, in addition to a fourth interpretation of “natural aristocracy” that Rawls does not discuss. The three interpretations are the system of natural liberty, liberal equality, and democratic equality. These are complemented by the principle of efficiency, which states that a society produces all commodities equally, without prioritizing some over others.

Rawls states that the system of natural liberty ensures the principle of efficiency. However, the principle of efficiency can be applied to the basic structure of justice as fairness by stating that the basic structure is efficient when it cannot be altered to increase the prospects of some without correspondingly decreasing the prospects of others. There are many possible efficient arrangements of the basic structure, but not all are just. The system of natural liberty constrains the principle of efficiency through institutional requirements, resulting in an efficient distribution accepted as just.

The system of democratic equality combines the principle of fair equality of opportunity with the difference principle. In this system, prospects must not be secured for those better off unless doing so would advantage the less fortunate.

The difference principle dictates that an unequal distribution should only be tolerated if it increases the prospects of all parties. Otherwise, an equal distribution is preferred. If an equal distribution cannot be achieved, an unequal distribution is justifiable only if the inequality is to the advantage of the worse off.

In this respect, the difference principle accords with the principle of efficiency because the difference principle is satisfied when it is impossible to increase the prospects of any one representative person without decreasing those of another. Inequalities are chain-connected: If an inequality raises a representative person in the lowest position, it raises those in all positions in between, and therefore “everyone benefits when the difference principle is satisfied” (70).

Further, a close-knit group ensures that the difference principle operates in the correct order because the principle will first maximize the welfare of the worst-off representative person, followed by the second worst-off, then the third, and so on, until reaching the best-off representative person.

The second part of the second principle of justice as fairness is the liberal principle of fair equality of opportunity. The principle of open positions forbids excluding groups from positions because those excluded would feel unjustly treated, even if they receive a greater benefit from the efforts of those allowed to obtain such positions. Rawls states that such excluded groups “would be deprived of one of the main forms of human good” (73), and adds that “[t]he role of the principle of fair opportunity is to insure that the system of cooperation is one of pure procedural justice” (76).

Justice as fairness produces a society motivated by cooperative venture for mutual advantage. This system treats distributive shares as a matter of pure procedural justice: A scheme of justice that dictates a fair procedure that, if followed, will result in a fair outcome, whatever it is, through the construction and impartial administration of a just system of institutions. Utilitarianism, by contrast, follows imperfect procedural justice, which has an independent criterion for the correct outcome but no procedure guaranteed to arrive at the outcome.    

The notions of the basic structure, the veil of ignorance, of a lexical order, of the least-favored position, and of procedural justice, taken independently, do not produce a system of justice, but combined, they provide a basic structure for the concept of justice as fairness.

When comparing goods within the framework of social justice, objective grounds to which persons can recognize and agree should be established. The difference principle establishes objective grounds for interpersonal comparisons in two ways. First, once the least-advantaged representative person is identified, only ordinal judgments of well-being are applied. Second, the difference principle simplifies the basis of interpersonal comparisons.

The primary social goods are rights, liberties and opportunities, and income and wealth: “[A] person’s good is determined by what is for him the most rational long-term plan of life given reasonably favorable circumstances,” with a rational plan being one that cannot be improved (79).

In contrast to the basic liberties, primary social goods are not always equal, as justice as fairness “assume[s] that the members of society are rational persons able to adjust their conceptions of the good to their situation” (81). The systems established by justice as fairness allow persons to pursue the social goods they desire without making value judgments on specific social goods.

In justice as fairness, a person holds two social positions: a position of equal citizenship and a position defined by the person’s place in the distribution of income and wealth. The basic structure should be appraised from the position of equal citizenship, which is defined by the rights and liberties of the principle of equal liberty and the principle of fair equality of opportunity.

The second position, a person’s place in the distribution of income and wealth, is more difficult to precisely define. It is argued that the least-advantaged group is defined by those least favored in family and class origins, natural endowments, and luck in the course of life, but Rawls concedes that some arbitrariness exists in defining this group. Once the relevant positions are established, judgments made from their perspective override claims from more particular situations; that is, the general point of view is preferred to the specific, detailed perspective: “By selecting the so-called starting places one follows out the idea of mitigating the effects of natural accident and social circumstance” (85).

The two principles express an egalitarian conception of justice. The difference principle incorporates the principle of redress by compensating for the inequalities of birth and natural endowment. Incorporating the principle of redress removes any emphasis on social efficiency and technocratic values from the basic structure. The difference principle is also a principle of mutual benefit because it incorporates reciprocity.

The difference principle incorporates the principle of fraternity by eliminating the desire for greater advantage unless it’s to the benefit of those less well-off. The democratic interpretation of the two principles of justice incorporates the traditional ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity as follows: “[L]iberty corresponds to the first principle, equality to the idea of equality in the first principle together with equality of fair opportunity, and fraternity to the difference principle” (91).

The order of adoption for a society should be as follows: principles for the basic structure of society, principles for individuals, principles for the law of nations, and priority rules (which may be tentatively adopted earlier and revised later).

The principle of fairness accounts for all requirements and obligations that are not natural duties and holds that a person must abide by the rules of an institution if the institution is just (satisfies the two principles of justice) and the person has voluntarily accepted the benefits of the institution.

The principle of fairness is an obligation arising from a contractual agreement. Obligations are distinct from other moral requirements and have three characteristics: they arise from voluntary acts, the content of the obligation is specified by the rules of an institution, and obligations are owed to definite persons cooperating to maintain the arrangement from which the obligation arose. For this reason, the contractual nature of the principle of fairness dictates that a person cannot be bound to unjust institutions.

A natural duty can be positive (the duty of mutual aid) in that it requires action, or negative (the duty not to harm) because it requires refraining from action. Rawls states that “[n]egative duties have more weight than positive ones” (98). Natural duties apply regardless of a person’s voluntary acts and have no connection to institutions or social practices. Though derived from contract theory, the principles of natural duty do not require consent or any voluntary act: “From the standpoint of justice as fairness, a fundamental natural duty is the duty of justice. This duty requires us to support and to comply with just institutions that exist and apply to us” (99).