1. Justice as Ideal & Absolute Truth

Angle Key Takeaways
Static vs Dynamic Static grasp = comprehension of an ideal absolute truth.
Dynamic grasp = that truth evolving with rationality and social consciousness.
Context-dependence What once looked “just” (slavery, caste, women’s subjugation) later turns unjust as moral horizons widen.
Etymology “Jangere” (Latin) → to bind; root of “jus”. Justice binds society into fair relations.
Binding idea Distributes rights, duties, rewards, punishments on morally defensible grounds.

 2. Classical Principles of Justice

Source Core Rule Scholar / Era
Roman Emperor Justinian Alterum non laedere – “Do not harm others.”
Suum cuique tribuere – “Give each his due.”		 Late Roman
Plato Proper stationing + non-interference. Republic
Aristotle General Justice (overall goodness) vs Particular Justice: rectificatory (correct wrongs) and distributive (share honours, resources). Nicomachean Ethics

 3. Justice as a Balancing Yard-stick

  • Resolves clashes—most famously liberty ↔ equality.

  • Your stance pivots on which value you badge as ultimate.

Conception Ultimate Value Political Stream
Procedural Liberty Liberalism → emphasises formal equality & opportunity.
Substantive Equality Socialism → seeks equality of outcomes.

 4. Liberalism → Utilitarianism → Rawls

  1. Classic Liberalism worships liberty.

  2. Utilitarianism shifts to utility—“greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

  • Flaw: legitimises majoritarianism; minorities become means.

  1. Rawls (a Liberal Egalitarian) grafts Kantian ethics—no person is a mere means.

  • Rawls’s maxim: “Each person has an inviolability… the welfare of all cannot override the freedom of some.”

5. Rawls in Focus

  • Signature works: Justice as Fairness (1958), A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism (1993), The Laws of Peoples (1998).

  • Society’s nature: Cooperative yet conflictual; justice is its first virtue (truth is for thought).

  • Social contract redux: Original Position behind a “veil of ignorance” → impartial choice of principles.

  • Moral powers:

    1. Sense of Justice (reasonableness, reciprocity).

    2. Conception of the Good (life-plans).

  • Primary goods: Rights, liberties, income, wealth—tools every life-plan needs.

Maximin Rule & the Two Principles

  • Maximin logic: “Maximise the minimum.” Choose rules that secure the best worst-case scenario.

  • Principle 1 – Liberty: Each person enjoys the most extensive equal basic liberty compatible with the same liberty for others.

  • Principle 2 – Difference + Fair Equality of Opportunity: Inequalities are only just if they benefit the least advantaged and attach to positions open to all under fair opportunity.

  • Lexical priority: Liberty first; only then weigh Principle 2.

 Reflective Equilibrium

  • Iterative balancing between held judgments and chosen principles.

  • Narrow equilibrium: align your set of beliefs with one principle-set.

  • Wide equilibrium: re-adjust after scanning all moral considerations.

  • End-goal: a coherent web you can defend under cross-examination—precisely what evaluators annotate in the margin.

6. Communitarian Critique of Rawls – Core Points

Michael Sandel ( Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 1982)

Concept of Self

  • Rawls: self prior to its ends (freely chooses goals).
  • Sandel: humans are “embedded selves”; identities and purposes are given by community, not chosen.
  • Original position is infeasible—agents cannot step outside communal attachments.

Individual ↔ Community

  • Rawls over-states autonomy, under-states communal bonds.
  • Disinterested contractors behind the veil later feel duty to aid disadvantaged; Sandel says genuine concern arises from shared life.

Role of the State

Against Rawlsian neutrality, state should advance community’s vision of the good.

In a united community, abstract rights-talk becomes redundant.

Neutral-State Skepticism (Communitarian View)

  • True neutrality is an illusion; every state expresses a cultural ethos.

  • Alasdair MacIntyre: moral norms vary by tradition.

  • Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice, 1983): justice is relativistic & particularistic; goods carry social meanings of distinct communities.

7. Rawls’s Reply – Political Liberalism (1993)

  • Political conception is free-standing yet drawn from democratic public culture.

  • Key Devices:

    1. Overlapping Consensus.

    2. Reasonable Pluralism.

    3. Burden of Judgment.

 8. Rawls & Global Justice

  • Charles Beitz (1979), Thomas Pogge (1989, 2002) → extend Difference Principle worldwide.

  • Rawls: no global redistribution; instead, rules for “decent peoples”.

  • Eight duties: mutual independence, keep treaties, equitable deals, non-intervention, self-defence only, honour human rights, war-conduct code, aid burdened societies.

9. Robert Nozick – Entitlement Theory (Anarchy, State and Utopia)

  1. Justice in Acquisition

  2. Justice in Transfer

  3. Rectification

  • Motto: “From everyone as they choose, to everyone as they are chosen.”

  • Rejects patterned redistribution; accepts large inequalities if produced by just steps.

  • State = minimal “night-watchman”.

10. Ronald Dworkin – Equality of Resources

  • Equality = sovereign virtue; right to equal concern and respect.

  • Rejects Equality of Welfare; defends Equality of Resources:

  • Auction thought-experiment + envy test → distribution envy-free.

  • Distinguishes brute luck vs option luck.

11. Amartya Sen – Capability Approach

  • Justice = expanding capabilities (real freedoms), not only primary goods or welfare.

  • Functionings = valued doings/beings; development = capability expansion.

  • Advocates comparative assessment, public reasoning, removal of clear injustices.

  • Pratap Bhanu Mehta: calls Sen “anti-utopian yet utopian.”

Metric of Justice Rawls Dworkin Sen
Focus Primary goods Resources Capabilities

12. Feminist Conception of Justice

  • Julius Stone: law/justice are social constructs, context-bound.

  • Susan Moller Okin:

Household & family are blind spots; root of unfairness.

Veil of ignorance omits sex → gender bias persists.

Critique of Rawls’s male-generic language.

Theory: reconstruct roles via women’s full participation.

13. Debate on Rawls’s Democratic Equality

Strengths

  • Combines equal basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and difference principle.

Critiques

  • Robert Nozick: redistributive tax = forced labour.

  • G.A. Cohen: difference principle lets talented demand incentives.

  • Amartya Sen: primary goods ignore conversion differences.

  • Susan Okin: household labour and gender hierarchy remain unseen.

  • Rawls revises → property-owning democracy to curb inequality.

14. How Rawls Widens Liberal Justice

  • Original position forces protection of least advantaged while retaining liberty.

  • Shifts liberalism from formal rights to justice as fairness.

  • Introduces public reason, progressive tax, dispersed capital, fair value of liberty.

  • Sparked modern normative revival (Kymlicka, Sen, Forrester).

 15. Ambedkar’s Egalitarian Justice vs Rawls’s Procedural Justice

  • Ambedkar: abolition of caste; state-led redistribution; outcome-centred substantive justice.

  • Rawls: veil of ignorance + two principles; justice as whatever emerges from procedure.

Scholar Index

Bhimrao Ambedkar · Charles R. Beitz · Gerald Allan Cohen · Ronald Dworkin · Katrina Forrester · Emperor Justinian I · Immanuel Kant · Will Kymlicka · Alasdair MacIntyre · Pratap Bhanu Mehta · Robert Nozick · Susan Okin · Thomas Pogge · Michael Sandel · Amartya Sen · Julius Stone · Charles Taylor · Michael Walzer

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