Analyse John Rawls justification of discrimination to achieve the goals of justice. (2018, 15 Marks)
“Discrimination” here means justified differential treatment: unequal shares and compensatory measures that favour the disadvantaged. For John Rawls these are neither charity nor group privilege but part of democratic equality, derived from principles chosen behind the veil of ignorance — which also fence them in.
Why unequal treatment can be just
- Natural facts: the distribution of talent and birth “is neither just nor unjust”; justice lies in how institutions deal with it.
- Against the extremes: formal equality with free markets (natural liberty) lets morally arbitrary fortune decide shares; strict equal division leaves everyone poorer. Differential treatment that raises the floor beats both.
- Rational choice: not knowing where they will land, parties reason by maximin, preferring the scheme whose worst outcome is best — in effect insurance anyone might need.
- Stability: a scheme both advantaged and disadvantaged would choose commands lasting allegiance.
The components
- Fair equality of opportunity: non-discrimination is not enough while class and family decide who develops talent; opening positions in fact requires positive action at the starting line, above all public education.
- Difference principle: social and economic inequalities are legitimate only if they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged.
- Redress (§17): “undeserved inequalities call for redress”, so more might be spent educating the less gifted. The difference principle gives redress “some weight” without being identical to it. Rawls thus justifies compensatory measures without naming quotas.
- Lexical limit: equal basic liberty comes first, so there is no discrimination in basic liberties; fair opportunity then precedes the difference principle, so exclusion from office cannot be bought off with cash.
- Self-respect: “perhaps the most important” primary good. Bringing the excluded into offices secures its social bases, not just their income.
Indian application
- Articles 15(4), 16(4) and 46 institutionalise compensatory discrimination for substantive equality.
- Indra Sawhney (1992): the creamy layer is a difference-principle correction; the 50% ceiling protects others’ fair opportunity — lexical priority in judicial form.
- State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (2024) permitted sub-classification within Scheduled Castes, targeting the worst-off within the group.
- Caste enumeration in Census 2027, the first full count since 1931, meets the data problem: the least advantaged must be identified to be favoured.
Limits
- Robert Nozick: taxing earnings is “on a par with forced labor”; on his entitlement view, preferential selection likewise overrides what others hold by right.
- Rawls’s reticence: A Theory of Justice is ideal theory, identifying the least advantaged by income, not caste or race; group compensation was developed by others, notably Thomas Nagel‘s “Equal Treatment and Compensatory Discrimination” (1973).
- Amartya Sen: primary goods miss stigma and conversion handicaps; a realisation-focused comparison would target capabilities.
- The left: C. B. Macpherson held that Rawls takes class inequality as given, so his remedies manage it rather than end it.
Conclusion
Rawls justifies discrimination as a derivative of fairness, not an exception to it: required where it raises the least advantaged, forbidden where it touches basic liberty. His ideas inform welfare and affirmative-action states, though he himself preferred a property-owning democracy; the caste-versus-income debate marks his limit.