Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement is a 2001 treatise by the liberal philosopher John Rawls. It is the last book he published before his death in 2002, and due to his declining health, he was unable to finish several sections of it, especially Parts 4 and 5. Notes also indicate plans for a section revising the international dimensions of the theory as he had spelled out in his 2001 book The Law of Peoples. As the subtitle of Justice is Fairness indicates, it is an explicit attempt to revise his most famous work, A Theory of Justice (1971), frequently referring to that earlier work and indicating where he has made changes to its original formulations. Nearly all of Rawls’s writings following the publication of A Theory of Justice reframe, expand, or revise that work.

This summary is based on the third hardcover printing by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA: 2003).

Summary

In Justice as Fairness, Rawls focuses on justice as an organizing principle for political life, informing the “basic structure” (10) of a constitutional order and establishing the basic rights and liberties of citizens. Since this version of justice is a political concept, it does not demand any particular beliefs or practices among citizens except insofar as they participate in public life. Rawls frequently distinguishes his political concept of justice with comprehensive moral doctrines, such as those of a religion or ideology, which would require the coercive use of state power to ensure that everyone in a community complied with its rules. In a politically liberal society, the only absolute moral truth is, paradoxically, tolerating a wide variety of belief systems, which Rawls calls “reasonable pluralism.” The citizens of a liberal society come together to protect their shared right to pursue goodness as they understand it, although they also espouse a common commitment to rationality as the proper standard for resolving disputes.

Rawls lays out what he regards as the ideal principles of a liberal society and the best possible method for achieving them in political practice. He begins with “Fundamental Ideas,” the core concepts underpinning a liberal society. The first is the basic notion of society as a “fair system of cooperation” (5). To ensure that such a society can sustain itself from one generation to the next, basic structure that institutionalizes principles of justice to which all citizens consent is necessary. The most important of these principles is that all citizens are free and equal, that they all deserve a chance to contribute to the betterment of society and pursue the good as they understand it. The basic structure must also establish rules of political engagement, including a shared understanding of what constitutes rational argument and the permissibility of drawing on private moral beliefs to influence public policy so long as they overlap with public principles of justice. Rawls then turns to the principles of justice on which the basic structure should be based. The two most important are that “each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties” and that social inequalities “must be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society” (42-43). To determine who is the least advantaged, Rawls relies on the concept of “primary goods” (58), the material and psychological resources that one needs in order to utilize one’s moral powers. While some degree of inequality is inevitable, a society must work to prevent excessive concentrations of wealth and power that will inhibit equal opportunity. To provide a philosophic foundation for his principles of justice, Rawls turns to the “original position,” a hypothetical meeting of representatives who are deciding on a basic structure. To ensure that the basic structure is based on principles of justice and not a compromise between competing interests, the representatives must not know their own social status, and so they must prepare for the possibility of being among the least advantaged. Rawls believes that this fear of ending up on the bottom of the social ladder will ensure equal rights. The original position of course cannot happen in reality, but it provides an ideal standard against which to compare alternative proposals.

Having laid out how and why a liberal society would adopt his principles of justice, Rawls then turns to the specific institutions that a basic structure should establish. He concludes that there are two possible just regime types, either a “property-owning democracy” or liberal socialism (135-36). He also insists that a constitutional democracy is preferable to a procedural democracy, as the latter might allow the majority to strip away the rights of minorities. He also argues that the family should remain the principal institution in which to prepare children for the responsibilities of citizenship. The fifth and final section addresses the practical difficulties a liberal democracy is likely to face, including the ability to sustain support for principles of justice over the course of generations and whether those who believe in comprehensive moral doctrines would refrain from seeking to impose them upon others. Rawls is confident that the experience of living in a just and tolerant society will build public confidence in its underlying principles and that humanity’s future can be significantly better than its past.