Appendix

RAWLS'S THEORY OF JUSTICE

In his highly influential paper 'Justice as Fairness', Professor

John Rawls offers a description of some beliefs about justice,
in the form of two 'principles of justice', together with a kind
of explanation of these beliefs - 'a conjectural account of the
background of justice', 1 or account of the manner in which
'principles ofjustice may be regarded as arising' . 2 This appendix
contains a brief exposition of Rawls's main ideas, as set out in
'Justice as Fairness' and elsewhere,J and some criticisms.

Rawls's two principles are:

(A) 'Each person participating in a practice, or affected by
it, has an equal right to the most extensive liberty com-
patible with a like liberty for all.' ('Practice' is Rawls's
name for 'social institution'.)
(B) 'Inequalities are arbitrary unless it is reasonable to
expect that they will work out for everyone's advantage,
and provided the positions and offices to which they
attach, or from which they may be gained, are open to
all.'4
He does not claim that (A) and (B) are 'the principles of
justice', but only that they are typical of a family of principles
normally associated with the concept ofjustice.s Are they meant
to state conditions for the correct application of at least some
typical senses of 'just' to practices ? Or are they meant to
express moral beliefs which employ a sense of 'just' ?
Rawls's answer would be that they are meant in both ways.
'Philosophical Review, LXVII (I958) I75· The paper is reprinted in Laslett
and Runciman (eds), Philosophy, Politics and Society, 2nd series.
2 'Justice as Fairness' (henceforth JF), p. I 78.

J See Bibliographical Note 4 JF, p. I65. s JF, p. I65.

APPENDIX 71
For in stating the conditions under which a practice can be
called just, you are necessarily also stating the conditions under
which that practice is at least prima facie morally good. For it
is part of the meaning of justice that it is a virtue of social
institutions, though not their only virtue. 1 Again, 'reasons of
justice have a special weight.... Moreover, it belongs to the
concept of justice that they do have this weight' . 2 Indeed,
'with respect to the principle of the greatest satisfaction of
desire •.. the principles of justice have an absolute weight' . 3
(A) is presented by Rawls himself as an innocuously
embroidered version of the maxim that only unequals may be
treated unequally, and (B) as a criterion for deciding when
people may be regarded as unequals. He stresses that (A) holds
'only if other things are equal: that is, while there must always
be a justification for departing from the initial position of equal
liberty •.. and the burden of proof is placed on him who would
depart from it, nevertheless, there can be, and there often is, a
justification for doing so'. (A) 'holds, for example, that there is
a presumption against the distinctions and classifications made
by legal systems and other practices to the extent that they
infringe on the original and equal liberty of the persons
participating in them. The second principle defines how this
presumption may be rebutted',4
So far, then, it looks as if (A) could just as well have been
replaced by
(AI) Equals should have equal liberty.
And perhaps this is what Rawls means when he says: 'It may
be argued at this point that justice requires only an equal
liberty.'s Where then does the clause about 'the most extensive
liberty compatible with a like liberty for all' come from?
Here is Rawls's explanation:

If a greater liberty were possible for all without loss or

conflict then it would be irrational to settle on a lesser
liberty. There is no reason for circumscribing rights unless
their exercise would be incompatible, or would render the
practice of defining them less effective. Therefore no serious
distortion of the concept of justice is likely to follow from
including within it the concept of the greatest equalliberty. 6

I JF, p. r6s. z JF, p. r8g. 3 JF, p. rgo.

4 JF, pp. 166-7. 5 ]F, p. 167. 6 JF, p. 167.
F
72 THE CONCEPT OF JUSTICE

But whether or not this explanation is entirely satisfactory, we

can take it that Rawls means (A) to be equivalent to
(A2) Equals should have equal liberty and the most exten-
sive liberty which is compatible with this.
Let us now turn to (B). Rawls emphasises two points about
its interpretation. Firstly, 'by inequalities we are to understand
not any differences between offices and positions, but differences
in the burdens or benefits attached to them either directly or
indirectly, such as prestige or wealth, or liability to taxation
and compulsory services'. 1 Secondly, (B) allows an equality
only if 'there is reason to believe that the practice with the
inequality, or resulting from it, will work for the advantage of
every party engaging in it' . 2
It implies that the representative man in every office or
position defined by a practice, when he views it as a going
concern, must find it reasonable to prefer his condition and
prospects with the inequality to what they would be under
the practice without it. The principle excludes, therefore,
the justification of inequalities on the grounds that the
disadvantages of those in one position are outweighed by
those in another position.3
If we take these two points into account, (B) seems to be best
interpreted as equivalent to
(B1) Two people should be regarded as equal only if the
burdens and benefits which are allotted to them by the
social institutions can be reasonably expected to work
out to their equal advantage.
The question still remains, however, of what it means for a
practice to work out for everyone's advantage. Wolff remarks
that a practice presumably works out for everyone's advantage
only if everyone prefers it to 'some other, hypothetical or
actual, associated practice, perhaps one with "analogous"
roles or having a historical relationship to the present practice'. 4
But there is no way of telling what this other 'base-line'
practice is. 'What for example is the base-line practice against
which to measure the institution of slavery, or the admission
procedures of American colleges, or the custom of polygamous
I JF, p. 167. 2 JF, p. 167. 3 JF, p. 168.
4 R. P. Wolff, 'A Refutation of Rawls's Theorem on Justice', Journal of
Philosophy, LXIII (Ig66) 181.
APPENDIX 73
marriage ?' Rawls goes at least some way towards meeting this
1

difficulty in his paper 'Distributive Justice':

. . . the basic structure of the social system affects the life
prospects of typical individuals according to their initial
places in society, say the various income classes into which
they are born, or depending upon certain natural attributes,
as when institutions make discriminations between men and
women or allow certain advantages to be gained by tho::.e
with greater natural abilities. The fundamental problem of
distributive justice concerns the differences in life-prospects
which come about in this way. We interpret the second prin-
ciple to hold that these differences are just if and only if the
greater expectations of the more advantaged, when playing
a part in the working of the whole social system, improve
the expectations of the least advantaged. The basic structure
is just throughout when the advantages of the more fortunate
promote the well-being of the least fortunate, that is, when a
decrease in their advantages would make the least fortunate
even worse off than they are. The basic structure is perfectly
just when the prospects of the least fortunate are as great
as they can be.z
Rawls suggests that his two principles of justice 'can be
viewed as those principles which mutually self-interested and
rational persons, when similarly situated and required to make
in advance a firm commitment, could acknowledge as restric-
tions governing the assignment of rights and duties in their
common practices, and thereby accept as limiting their rights
against one another'.3 One ofthe things which Rawls means by
'similarly situated' is that the persons 'are sufficiently equal in
power and ability to guarantee that in normal circumstances
none is able to dominate the others' .4
One of the things he means by making a commitment 'in
advance' is that no one will know what sort of powers and
capacities he will have in the future, or what his position in
society will be in the future.
Now since these persons are equal in power 'there is no way
for anyone to win special advantages for himself' .s Therefore
' ... each might consider it reasonable to acknowledge equality
as an initial principle', 6 i.e. acknowledge principle (A). 'There
I Ibid., p. 185. z p. 66 (see Bibliographical Note).
3 JF, p. 174· 4 JF, p. 171.
s JF, p. 173· 6 JF, p. 173·
74 THE CONCEPT OF JUSTICE

is, however, no reason why they should regard this position as

final.' 1 Since each person is an egoist, he will favour principles
which license any inequalities which he can expect to gain
from. Since each person is a rational egoist, the inequalities
which he expects to gain from will be those which it is reason-
able to expect he will gain from. Since no person will know
exactly what sort of powers and capacities he will have in the
future, no person will be able to tell which principles will
license inequalities which only he will gain from. Each person
will therefore acknowledge a principle which can reasonably
be expected to license inequalities which every single person
will gain from, and which he himself has the chance to
gain from by his own efforts, i.e. each person will acknow-
ledge (B).
Rawls stresses that this account is not 'in any way fictitious.
In any society where people reflect on their institutions they
will have an idea of what principles ofjustice would be acknow-
ledged under the conditions described, and there will be
occasions when questions of justice are actually discussed in
this way.' 2 And in fact these contentions about the 'background
of justice' are supposed to be explanatory - chiefly in that they
show the connection between principles of justice and a certain
very familiar type of argument about fairness. A person will in
fact accept that an arrangement is fair, whenever he realises
that it conforms to principles which he would have accepted
if he had not known how they would actually work out in his
case. And, according to Rawls, the principles which he would
have accepted can be shown to be principles of justice. Indeed
Runciman, in his inquiry about the justice of current British
social inequalities, finds it simpler not to work with Rawls's
two principles themselves, but takes it instead that 'If a person
claims that an inequality to which he is subject is unjust, he
must be able to give an affirmative answer to the question:
"Is this claim based on a principle to which you would have
subscribed even if, as far as you know, you were as likely to be
a loser as a gainer by its implementation?" 'J

Several writers have claimed that it is not necessarily true

that Rawls's rational egoists would, under the conditions he
I JF, p. I73· 2 JF, p. I77.

a W. G. Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (rg66) p. 253·

APPENDIX 75
describes, acknowledge principles (A) and (B). But it is not
1

entirely clear that their arguments are successful. The weakness

of Rawls's claims about the necessary overridingness of prin-
ciples of justice is, on the other hand, quite patent. But even if
(A) and (B) would necessarily be chosen by rational egoists,
and even if justice were necessarily overriding, we would still
need to ask how accurately (A) and (B), or the formulae to
which they seem to be equivalent, express the descriptive con-
tent of the notion of justice. Purging (A2) and (B 1) of those
normative elements which derive from Rawls's claims about
the necessary overridingness of justice, we get
(A3) Equals have the most extensive liberty compatible
with a like liberty for all
and
(B2) Two people are equal only if the burdens and benefits
which are allotted to them by the social institutions
to which they belong can be reasonably expected to
work out to their equal advantage.
And the question we must now ask is, how useful are (A3)
and (B2) when it comes to describing the meaning of 'just'?
Now provided you take 'liberty' broadly enough, so that it
can cover every sort of benefit, it is no doubt true that it is a
necessary condition for a social institution to be called just that
it results in equals having an equal liberty. But if what I said
in Chapter 2 is correct, there is still an indefinitely wide range
of possible criteria for deciding whether people are equals,
when it comes to deciding whether their treatment is just. A
criterion on which people are counted as equals only if they are
allotted burdens and benefits which can be reasonably expected
to work out to their equal advantage will at best be only one
of these possible criteria. And if what I said in Chapter 3 is
correct, it will not be the most popular criterion. For the most
usual thing is to ask, when one is deciding whether or not this
particular necessary condition for justice is satisfied, is whether
or not people are equally deserving. And two people can per-
fectly well derive equal advantage from a social practice
without being equally deserving.
But what (A3) actually says is that equals have the most
'Wolff, 'A Refutation ... ', pp. 187-g; B. M. Barry, 'On Social Justice',
Oxford Review, no. 5 (1967) 29-52.
76 THE CONCEPT OF JUSTICE

extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all. And there
seems to be no way at all of defending the thesis that it is a
necessary condition for a social institution to be just that it
satisfies this condition. Suppose you continue to stretch 'liberty'
out of recognition. Then whatever particular criterion you
take for deciding whether two people are equal, you might
still find that if they had the most extensive liberty compatible
with their having equal liberty, they would have an amount of
liberty whose value was unequal to the value of their attributes,
i.e. in the terms of Chapter 2, you could find that my condition
(C) was violated. In particular, you could say that a practice
or a social institution was unjust because it gave equals an
equal amount of liberty, but each person more liberty than he
deserved.
Nor will narrowing down the sense ofliberty be of any help.
For in the first place it will then not necessarily be equal
liberty that equals must have if a situation is to be just; there is
an indefinite number of other criteria for deciding whether
the effects of a situation on people are equally valuable. And
secondly, even if we do choose this particular criterion for the
evaluation of effects, you could again say that a social institu-
tion was unjust because it gave equals an equal amount of
liberty but each person more than he deserved. For instance,
you could claim that a law was unjust because it prescribed a
disproportionately small term of imprisonment for a certain
type of crime.
So in general, and even if we ignore Rawls's insistence that
the liberty which equals enjoy must be not merely equal but
the most extensive compatible with its equal distribution, it
seems impossible to wring more than one necessary condition
for one not very popular sense of 'just' out of his two prin-
ciples.
But in the last resort, the question of what 'just' means is of
course unimportant. What is important is to formulate various
possible moral principles clearly, and ask questions about their
justification or unavoidability, their popularity and their
particular implications. Once this has been done, it doesn't
matter what names these principles are given. The acceptance
of a faulty description of the meaning of 'just' could initially
divert one's attention from that particular range of possible
moral principles in which the concept of justice is employed.
APPENDIX 77
But once a correct description of the concept has revealed these
possibilities, one can afford to recognise that even a faulty
description of the concept can reveal other possible moral
principles, as worthy of investigation as principles of justice
themselves.
Bibliographical Note
Rawls's theory of justice is set out in: 'Justice as Fairness', Philosophical
Review, LXVII (I958) I64-g4; 'The Sense of Justice', Philosophical Review,
LXXII (I963) 28I-305; 'Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice',
Nomos, VI (I963) 98--I25; and 'Distributive Justice', in P. Laslettand W. G.
Runciman (eds), Philosophy, Politics and Society, 3rd series (Oxford, I967).
Rawls's ideas are applied to particular social questions by W. G. Runciman
in Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (I966) and '"Social" Equality',
Philosophical Quarter[y, XVII (I967) 22I-30.
Apart from Rawls's writings, the most influential recent works are Ch.
Perelman, The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument (I963), H. L. A.
Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford, I96I), W. K. Frankena, Some Beliefs about
Justice (Lawrence, Kansas, I966) and Nicholas Rescher, Distributive Justice
(Indianapolis, I966). Rescher comes closer to the principal contentions of
Chapter 2 of the present book than the other three authors, and is very
much less vague than they are about the logical relations between various
general or formal necessary conditions for the application of 'just', and
about the degree of Spielraum which these conditions allow in the choice
of specific criteria for deciding such questions as whether people are
relevantly equal. J. G. H. Newfield, 'Equality in Society', Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, LXVI (I965-6) I93-210 is also recommended.
Since the distinction between senses of 'just' and principles of justice
has been generally neglected, little has been written about differences
between various possible principles of justice themselves. Some writers
have indeed claimed that, even though 'just' has a fixed descriptive meaning
and is no mere general commendatory term, it is necessarily true that just
actions are right. There is a good critique of this view in D. C. Emmons,
'Justice Reassessed', American Philosophical Quarter[y, IV (I967) I44-5I.
Equipment for a more refined proliferation of possible principles of justice
than I have been able to offer can be found in G. H. von Wright, An Essay
in Deontic Logic and the General Theory of Action, Acta Philosophica Fennica,
Fasc. XXI (Amsterdam, I968).
Little has been written on the psychological factors affecting the relative
popularity of principles of justice. J. Rawls, 'The Sense of Justice',
Philosophical Review, LXXII (I963) 28I-305 is ostensibly devoted to this topic.
W. Kaufmann, 'The Origin of Justice', Review of Metaphysics, XXIII {I969)
209-39 contains some material on the views of Nietzsche and Mill. In
'Whatever the Consequences', Ana[ysis, XXVII {I966) 83-102, Jonathan
Bennett tries to show that all principles of the form 'It would always be
wrong to . . . whatever the consequences' are in the last resort on a par
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 79
with 'It would always be wrong to leave a bucket in the hallway, etc.',
and can only be accepted by someone who either submits to a moral
authority such as the Church, or misapprehends the nature of the distinction
between actions and consequences. If his arguments were successful, we
could prove some additional conclusions about the potential unpopularity
of certain principles of justice. There is a brief general discussion of difficul-
ties about lack of general consistency in von Wright, An Essay on Deontic
Logic and the General Theory tif Action, pp. 78-81.
The relations between justice and equality are discussed by D. D.
Raphael in 'Equality and Equity', Philosophy, XXI (1946) 118-32, and
Problems tif Political Philosophy (London, 1970) chap. vii. For a careful
account of the various notions of equality which can be employed in
principles of equality, see Felix E. Oppenheim, 'Egalitarianism as a Descrip-
tive Concept', American Philosophical Quarter(;!, vu (1970) 143-52. The
papers by Mortimore and Williams, cited on pp. 59 and 6o above, are
also recommended. Little which is both philosophically sophisticated and
non-Rawlsian has been written in English about justice and socialism.
Leonard Nelson's System der philosophischen Rechtslehre und Politik, in Siimtliche
Werke, Bd. VI (Frankfurt a.M., 1964) is a deeply impressive attempt at a
complete political casuistry based on a principle of justice.