JUSTICE AND FAIRNESS

Rawls ‘Justice as Fairness’

• Rawls is said to somewhat used the elements of
both Kantian and Utilitarian philosphy in
describing a method for the moral evaluation of
social and political institutions.
Rawls ‘Justice as Fairness’
• First Principle – The Liberty Principle
• “Each person has the same and indefeasible (permanent) claim to a
fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is
compatible with the same scheme for liberties for all.”
• Second Principle – Fair Equality of Opportunity and the
Difference Principle
• “Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions (1) first,
they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under
conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and (2) second, they are to
be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of
society).”
Rawls ‘Justice as Fairness’
• Thought Experiment
• Unless institutions such as the constitution, economy, and education system
functioned in a just way for all, social justice would not truly exist in a
society.
• Rational Human Beings would pick four things of their wants:
• Wealth and income
• Rights and liberties
• Opportunities for advancement
• Self-respect
Distributive Justice
• Concerns the nature of a socially just allocation of goods in a
society.
• Includes the available quantities of goods, the process by which
goods are distributed, and the subsequent allocation of the
goods to society members
• Said to have occurred if rewards and costs are allocated
according to the designated distributive norms of the group.
Distributive Justice
Distributive Norms
• Equity – members outcomes should be based upon their inputs
• Equality – regardless of inputs, all group members should be given an
equal share of the rewards/costs
• Power – those with more authority, status, or control over the group
should receive more than those in lower level positions
• Need – those in greatest needs should be provided with resources
needed to meet those needs
• Responsibility – group members who have the most should share
their resources with those who have less
Distributive Justice
Other views
• Egalitarian – a set of closely related socio-economic-political
theories that without exemption promote the proposition that
all society members ought to have exactly equal amount of
resources
• Capitalist – when people, businesses, and corporations perform
based on their individual self-interest for their own benefit
• Socialist – a system where the government or a central
authority control the production of goods and services
State and Citizens Responsibility
• Taxation and Inclusive Growth
• Taxation – states or governments finance their expenditure,
basically and ideally for constituents, by imposing charges on them
and corporate entities.
• Inclusive Growth – economic growth that creates opportunity for
all segments of the population and distributes the dividends of
increased prosperity both in monetary and non-monetary terms,
fairly across society.