How has Rawls enriched the idea of justice in liberalism? (2021, 20 Marks)
Before John Rawls, liberalism had a theory of liberty and a working method, utilitarianism, but no developed theory of justice. A Theory of Justice (1971), which calls justice “the first virtue of social institutions,” supplied one, reconciling liberty with equality. The enrichment shows best when set against the liberalism it replaced.
Liberalism before and after Rawls
| Theme | Before Rawls | After Rawls |
|---|---|---|
| Normative theory | Peter Laslett (1956): political philosophy “dead” under logical positivism | Revived; justice argued, not asserted |
| Justification | Jeremy Bentham‘s greatest happiness of the greatest number | Deontological: utilitarianism “does not take seriously the distinction between persons” |
| Social justice | Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944): pursuing distributive justice destroys the rule of law | Built in through the difference principle |
| Desert | Market rewards treated as earned | Natural lottery morally arbitrary; talents a common asset |
| Subject | Individual transactions | The basic structure of society |
A new method: the contract revived
- Rawls returned to the social contract of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, drawing on Kant’s idea of persons as ends.
- The original position is hypothetical, a device of representation, not a pre-political state. Behind a veil of ignorance, parties know nothing of their class, talents, conception of the good or generation, so none can tailor principles to their own advantage and the choice is fair.
- Facing a one-time choice of this gravity, they reason by maximin, securing the position of whoever ends up worst off.
- Principles are tested against considered judgements until they cohere (reflective equilibrium).
The principles and their currency
- In lexical order: equal basic liberties; then fair equality of opportunity; then the difference principle. Liberty is never traded for gain.
- Justice distributes primary goods: rights and liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect, since self-respect is “perhaps the most important primary good”. Status and dignity thus enter liberal justice.
- Pure procedural justice: fair background institutions make their outcomes just.
Later enrichments
- Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001) rejects welfare-state capitalism for property-owning democracy, dispersing capital in advance rather than redistributing afterwards.
- Political Liberalism (1993) accepts reasonable pluralism: justice becomes a political conception backed by an overlapping consensus and public reason, stable for the right reasons.
- The Law of Peoples (1999) adds human rights and a duty of assistance.
Limits
Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974) objected that patterned justice violates self-ownership, yet conceded that philosophers “must either work within Rawls’ theory or explain why not.” Michael Sandel rejected the unencumbered self; Amartya Sen showed that people convert primary goods into freedom unequally. All argue on ground Rawls prepared.
Indian anchor
- The Preamble’s social, economic and political justice and Articles 38–39 speak Rawlsian language.
- In Janhit Abhiyan v. Union of India (7 November 2022) petitioners invoked Rawls against the EWS quota; the 3:2 majority upheld it, while the dissent held that shutting poor SC, ST and OBC households out of it breached the equality code.
- The creamy layer and the sub-classification allowed in State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (2024) direct benefits to the least advantaged within groups.
Conclusion
Rawls made liberal justice egalitarian without ceasing to be liberal, institutional rather than transactional, and political rather than metaphysical. Critics have exposed gaps; none has displaced the framework, and contemporary liberal justice is still largely its working out.