Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

Rawls’s theory of “justice as fairness” is meant to provide a philosophical justification for a democracy, and so he turns to establishing the first principles of a democratic order. The most fundamental basis for democracy is a view of society as a system of fair cooperation sustaining itself from one generation to the next. For Rawls, this is not a principle that itself requires justification. He assumes that democracy is a worthwhile ideal, whereby each citizen has an equal right to participate in social life. Rawls is not interested in persuading anyone who might believe that society should be ordered along a formal hierarchy of race or class. He assumes that his audience is either living in or aspiring to live in a democracy and are looking to place that normative conviction on the firmest possible grounds. It is presumptively good for citizens to organize a society primarily through their own efforts, based on principles on which all consent, toward the benefit of everyone involved. This assumption helps to clarify the meaning of justice, one of the most important concepts in political philosophy and also one of the most difficult to define. Within a democratic framework, justice is ensuring that social cooperation is in fact fair, that no one is excluded or disadvantaged as a matter of policy. While it cannot promise equality in all respects, it establishes the equal worth of every citizen and their equal potential for contributing to the common good.

Rawls explicitly frames “justice as fairness” as an answer to debates between liberals and conservatives over the proper size and function of government. He appeals to conservatives by enshrining the right of citizens to hold private property, and he grants liberals the need for government to ensure genuine equality of opportunity. Society has the conservative task of preserving itself over generations, and justice requires a well-ordered society as a precondition. Citizens must understand and accept the laws, pursuing any necessary changes within the channels it provides for debate and reform. However, a well-ordered society also requires a liberal ethos of pluralism, tolerating various kinds of people and belief systems so long as they adhere to public principles of justice. The best form of unity is paradoxically one that embraces diversity.

To be well-ordered, a society needs a “basic structure,” an institutional framework for devising and implementing laws, as well as regulating the political behavior of citizens. It does not concern itself with other social aspects of a person’s life or their private life. They may join faith communities, trade associations, or other forms of civic association, all with their own rules and norms, which may or may not be just or fair, so long as these rules and norms do not interfere with the public administration of justice or deprive citizens of their capacity to partake in public life. At this point, Rawls offers no specifics as to what basic structure would be best, only that its overarching purpose must be justice.

Rawls admits that his work is theoretical, even abstract, and is concerned only with political life within a representative democracy. It also does not offer any specific policy guidelines, which in all cases must reflect the will of the society in question. Its main concern is to establish the fundamental principles that should be compelling to advocates of democracy. Also, Rawls does not plan on addressing the international implications of his theory, as he does in The Law of Peoples. He takes a single society as his main point of reference.

The main theoretical guide to the creation of a just and well-ordered society is the “original position,” a thought experiment Rawls introduced in A Theory of Justice. Even in a free society, the powerful have the desire and the capacity to shape outcomes to suit their interests. To resolve this problem, the original position imagines a group of representatives charged with designing the basic structure of society, but they are cloaked behind a “veil of ignorance” (15), so that they do not know their own social status or how they would fare in the new system. Since any of them could end up being among the least advantaged, they would be incentivized to promote a social order that provides the greatest possible benefit to those at the bottom of the social ladder. Rawls is aware that this is hypothetical and cannot possibly serve as a real foundation for social order, but it is valuable for imagining a society founded as closely as possible to the ideal of justice rather than the interests of competing groups. The original position depicts the founders of society as entirely free in their ability to design the basic structure and fully equal in their share of power. It thus lays the foundation for viewing all citizens as free and equal.

Freedom and equality stem from two moral powers that all people share: an understanding that justice is the necessary foundation of society and a willingness to pursue some version of what they regard as good. They therefore have the capacity to cooperate in the creation and maintenance of society, as well as the urge to do what they themselves believe is right. Rawls insists that justice is political, concerned only with the organization of society, and so it does not compel citizens to accept any particular morality. It rather safeguards their ability to affirm whatever morality they want, so long as it remains within the parameters of public justice. For example, a religious group may forbid its members from participating in politics, but this must be based upon their consent. It cannot force them to obey its mandates or prevent them from leaving: That is acting unjustly, even if they claim to be serving their version of the good. Likewise, such groups may have hierarchies and assign privileges and honors based on non-democratic criteria, but these must remain within the private domain. Freedom entails not only the ability to define one’s own version of the good, but also to have no version at all, or to change it upon reflection and experience. Whatever a person may believe, their status as a citizen remains unaffected, and the laws are designed to hold together people of all kinds of belief systems. Citizens are also free to the extent that they can make demands on society, rather than only have society make demands on them. Their understanding of what is good may shape their efforts to change policy, and society should assume the right to submit such claims to public discussion. Since ancient Greece, the very idea of freedom and equality has been tied to the right of social participation, and so Rawls is defining the rights of a citizen, meaning a full member of the political society, rather than a human being understood in any biological or psychological sense.

Rawls summarizes the previous sections, where the core concept of society is a fair system of cooperation, which requires that society be well-ordered. A well-ordered society depends in turn on the integrity of its basic structure, the best form of which would come about through the original position. The main purpose of the basic structure is to establish the equality and freedom of all citizens. A democratic system prohibits a basic structure appealing to a moral formulation such as religious doctrine or natural law and instead operates on the basis of reasonable pluralism. None of these principles can justify itself, and so it is up to Rawls to establish how his ideas reflect the values of a democratic age.

A just basic structure must create and maintain institutions that exhibit principles of justice in their daily operation and therefore win support insofar as they deliver on their promises. Here, public justification establishes the main principles guiding public debate. A good political argument is one capable of linking a specific policy to a set of values that society accepts universally. The best-ordered society is able to settle main issues of constitutional law while arguing over how they best apply to specific political questions. Public justification reaffirms the equal right of participation for all citizens, as the merits of their case stem entirely from the reasonableness of their arguments rather than their social position.

A system of public justification will ideally produce a condition Rawls calls “reflective equilibrium,” or harmony between judgments based on principle and those based on particulars. Conclusions about what is just must derive from reasoned contemplation and deliberation, as free as possible from personal biases. This of course does not mean that all people think the same way or that it is possible to abolish personal or group interests from political discussion. It is hard enough for a person to achieve such equilibrium within themselves, never mind an entire society. Even so, the concept of justice as fairness approaches the ideal better than alternative conceptions rooted in comprehensive moral doctrines, which are inherently imbalanced because they value the interests of believers and nonbelievers differently, as opposed to according equal weight to the rights of all citizens.