This chapter explores John Rawls’s political liberalism, a contemporary reworking of the idea of the social contract and one which straddles the boundary between Hobbesian rationality and Kantian reasonableness. The discussions cover the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’; the ‘original position’ and Rawls’s political constructivism; the principles of justice; the stability of the liberal State; the stages of application of the political conception of justice; and justice and liberal legitimacy.
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12. John Rawls’ Political Liberalism
J. E. Penner and E. Melissaris
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9. Theories of justice
Theories of justice are at the heart of any serious analysis of law and the legal system. They are an important feature of moral, political, and legal theory. From the Greeks to the present day the question of what constitutes a just society is a fundamental philosophical and practical concern. The disparities in wealth and living conditions between rich and poor countries generates a need for ‘global justice’ that applies to the world at large. This chapter analyses several theories of justice: utilitarianism; the related economic analysis of law; John Rawls’s influential theory of ‘justice as fairness’; Robert Nozick’s ‘entitlement theory’ of justice; the concept of equality; and the novel ‘capability’ approach.
