A Theory of Justice

The chapter begins by stating that justice is the most important feature of a society, as a loss of freedom for some cannot be justified by the greater good of others. A just society guarantees the liberties of equal citizenship and tolerates injustice only when necessary to avoid even greater injustice.

The principles of social justice assign rights and duties in society’s basic institutions and determine the distribution of a society’s benefits and burdens. A well-ordered society both advances the good of its members and regulates the public conception of justice. In such a society, all members accept the same principles of justice, everyone knows that everyone else accepts the same principles of justice, the basic social institutions satisfy the principles of justice accepted by the society, and everyone in the society knows the social institutions satisfy the principles of justice. Citizens and institutions must comply with its basic rules, and when infractions occur, stabilizing forces prevent further infractions and restore stability.

In a just system, institutions determine how individual rights, advantages, and duties are distributed to ensure social cooperation. The justice of any society depends on the fair distribution of economic opportunities and social conditions among different societal classes.

Justice requires consistent principles for assigning rights and duties and for defining the appropriate division of social advantages. This requires a standard for assessing the distributive aspects of governance and for defining social cooperation.

Justice as fairness represents an “original agreement” between “free and rational persons” on the standards of equality they would create for a society in which they can further their own interests (10). These principles regulate all societal agreements, dictate social cooperation, and direct the forms of government to be established. The original agreement represents a fair bargain formed in a hypothetical situation of equal liberty, under a veil of ignorance that provides mutual disinterest among hypothetical participants and ensures no demographic is advantaged or disadvantaged by the principles chosen due to natural chance or circumstance.

This situation results in a necessary rejection of utilitarianism because utilitarianism is incompatible with the idea of social cooperation among equals for mutual advantage. It is also inconsistent with the promise of reciprocity in a well-ordered society and the agreement inherent in the original position.

The hypothetical individuals in the original agreement would instead construct their society around two principles: one that ensures equal liberties and assigns basic rights and duties and one that requires social and economic inequality to benefit the least-advantaged members of society.

Before constructing a just society, a foundation of rational choice is necessary to decide which principles are worthy of inclusion in the initial contract. The initial contract is agreed upon in the original position. In the original position, free, equal, and rational individuals agree to remain ignorant of their positions in the society they will create. The exercise of evaluating principles from the original position leads to careful reflection on policies; individuals must examine policies from all possible angles since they may be subject to them.

The goal of justice as fairness is to distinguish itself from—and present an alternative to—utilitarian philosophy, which states that “society is rightly ordered, and therefore just when its major institutions […] achieve the greatest net balance of satisfaction summed over all the individuals belonging to it” (20).

Classical utilitarian philosophy argues a benefit is advantageous if it raises the aggregate prospects of a society, without concern for how such benefits are distributed among the individual members of society. For instance, in a classical utilitarian society, a benefit is worthwhile if it drastically increases the fortunes of the most well-off person while decreasing the fortunes of every other member of society, if the societal result is a net gain. This is in direct contrast with the two principles of justice, which favor the average distribution of benefits among all members of society.

Classical utilitarian theory does not prioritize individual rights. It aims to maximize the net gain of society, regardless of any other costs. Under classical utilitarianism, the rights of some may be restricted if it allows for a substantial increase in the distribution of goods to others. In such a system, slavery and other forms of systemic inequality are permitted if they are perceived to maximize a society’s net good. By contrast, the principles of justice as fairness prioritize individual rights, and therefore a restriction of liberty cannot be justified by a total increase in social goods to the society.

Rawls’s main objection to utilitarianism is that it views a civilization as one entity and “does not take seriously the distinction between persons” (24).

In a just society, liberty is prioritized over increasing aggregate social good, and basic rights are not granted or withheld based on political or economic interest.

Justice as fairness establishes the priority of liberty by showing that it would be chosen by the representative person in the original position. The priority of liberty is not embedded in utilitarianism as it is in justice as fairness because utilitarianism considers society as one decision-making body, rather than being made up of many individual decision makers.

Justice as fairness distinguishes itself from utilitarian thinking by illustrating that the principles of justice are the object of a unanimous original agreement among all persons. This is essential because “the plurality of distinct persons with separate systems of ends is an essential feature of human societies” (25).

The two philosophies are further contrasted in that utilitarianism is a teleological theory, while justice as fairness is a deontological theory. Teleological ethics base moral obligation on achieving desirable ends while deontological ethics base moral obligation on the morality of human actions.

The goal of utilitarianism is to maximize the total good. In justice as fairness, however, “if it is assumed that the persons in the original position would choose a principle of equal liberty and restrict economic and social inequalities to those in everyone’s interests, there is no reason to think that just institutions will maximize the good” (27).

Further, in utilitarianism, a society’s values decide what is right, whereas in justice as fairness, what is right defines a society’s values. A society based on justice as fairness relies on reciprocal advantage, while a utilitarian society relies on individuals who have no stake in the governance policies they create. Because they are not subject to the policies they believe will increase the greater good, they will not prioritize fairness.

Justice as fairness defines intuitionism as a group of principles given equal priority for which objective comparisons do not exist. Because no objective standard for comparison exists, one must use judgment or intuition to determine which principle is the most just.

Intuitionism is required when two conditions exist. First, a plurality of conflicting principles is given the same priority by the available objective criteria. Second, no explicit method or rules exist to weigh the principles. In philosophy, intuitionism creates a general scheme to weigh precepts, determine their balance, and narrow their limits. Justice as fairness does this to establish the principles of a well-ordered society.

Justice as fairness limits the role of intuition in three ways. First, it presumes the parties in the original position agree on how to balance the principles of justice. Second, it orders principles in serial or lexical order, which requires satisfaction of one principle before progressing to a second principle. Third, it limits the scope of questions and uses prudential, rather than moral, judgment.

Justice as fairness first identifies a position from which the system is to be judged, then questions whether a representative person in such a position would rationally prefer one arrangement over another. In doing this, justice as fairness limits the scope of the question and substitutes a judgment of rational prudence for an ethical judgment.

A conception of justice conforms to a person’s moral theory when their considered judgments, viewed from their reflective equilibrium, accord to its principles. Justice as fairness argues that the two principles of justice would be preferred in the original position to other conceptions of justice because they align better with persons’ considered judgments than the alternatives and offer progress towards their philosophical idea. This remains true if they do not achieve the ideal.