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Rawls first set out justice as fairness in systematic detail in his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. Rawls continued to rework justice as fairness throughout his life, restating the theory in Political Liberalism (1993), The Law of Peoples (1999), and Justice as Fairness (2001).
The original position is a central feature of John Rawls’s social contract account of justice, “justice as fairness,” set forth in A Theory of Justice (TJ). The original position is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice.
Rawls first set out justice as fairness in systematic detail in his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. Rawls continued to rework justice as fairness throughout his life, restating the theory in Political Liberalism (1993), The Law of Peoples (1999), and Justice as Fairness (2001).
John Rawls’ theory of justice is the most widely-cited example of a contractarian theory, but before outlining it, two words of caution are necessary. First, the shape of the theory has evolved from its first incarnation in Rawls (1958) through his major work A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971) and on to Rawls (1993) and Rawls (2001).
The most widely discussed theory of distributive justice in the past four decades has been that proposed by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice, (Rawls 1971), and Political Liberalism, (Rawls 1993). Rawls proposes the following two principles of justice:
Rawls’s arguments for the principles of justice from the original position are but the first stage of a “four-stage sequence.” Three further stages expand upon and elaborate the original position to apply these principles to determine the justice of legislation and social policies that affect the relevant basic social institutions.
John Rawls’s seminal book The Law of Peoples initiated many debates about global justice (Rawls 1999). Several questions soon became prominent in discussions including: What principles should guide international action?
Rawls’s positive view of justice is concerned primarily with the justice of institutions or (what he calls) the “basic structure” of society: justice as an individual virtue is derivative from justice as a social virtue defined via certain principles of justice.
He applies this to Rawls’ theory of justice, arguing that Rawls’ theories of the person and the role of morality are not just redescriptions of the judgments that support Rawls’ two principles of justice and thereby satisfy the constraint (Daniels 1996: 23–24, 50–62).
Pressing further the anti-consequentialist aspects of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, Nozick argued that respect for individual rights is the key standard for assessing state action and, hence, that the only legitimate state is a minimal state that restricts its activities to the protection of the rights of life, liberty, property, and contract.