John Rawls Justice As Fairness Analysis

John Rawls’ Justice as fairness attempts to both define the principles typical of justice and describe what a just society would necessary entail by the conception presented. What is described is not a perfectly good society, as justice is but one virtue among many, but a just one. Specifically, Rawls’ conception is that justice and fairness are one in the same. Using this as a starting point, Rawls focuses foremostly on the practices in a society, rather than any individual action. In this way, he expounds on what is meant by the term fairness and what value that term has in explaining justice. In this paper of three parts, I will first describe Rawls position on justice, including this position’s main principles. Secondly, I will examine

the methodology behind the derivation of these principles. Finally, I will discuss the relationship between Justice as fairness and utilitarianism and Rawls criticism of utilitarianism. However, I would also suggest that this criticism does not adequately explain Justice as Fairness’ superiority, nor does it adequately prove his claim that certain things are always unjust and should not be questioned.
Principles of Justice
In defining justice as fairness, Rawls first makes the distinction between fairness and equality. Inequality, he states, can be both just and unjust. The defining quality of inequality then is not whether it exists, but whether it exists arbitrarily. To the end of determining this quality, he develops two principles common to the family of principles the concept of justice draws from.
The first principle states that each person or entity should have the greatest amount of freedom allowed to them as is compatible with all others having that same freedom.

It would be obvious that the freedom to steel would be incompatible with the ability to own property, for example. This statement is qualified slightly, however; that it only applies universally when all else is equal. If one person or entity is to be granted some kind of additional freedom, for it to be just, it must not be granted arbitrarily. The burden of proof would then be put on the entity receiving the additional freedom to justify the existence of such an additional freedom. The second principle then would govern how such exemptions should be made

justly.
The second principle states that inequalities could be called arbitrary if they are either closed to any person or do not benefit the good of all. It should be clarified that the term ‘all’ refers to every person as an individual, rather than a nebulous utilitarian sort of ‘all’. For Rawls, if an inequality benefited one group greatly yet harmed another slightly, it still could not be considered just, unless the group harmed would be harmed in a greater way had that inequality not been put in place.
Take the court of law for example. A man has killed someone accidentally and is being sent to rehabilitation center because of it. This would remove his liberty for the sake of society as a whole – an inequality. However, if the prior alternative was exile from society (akin to death), having the court send this man to a prison has improved his life by giving him the option of one day returning to society. As anyone could conceivably gain the status of prisoner, the creation of the prisoner position seems just as according to Rawls. This is how the reverse functions as well - the person taking the position, a position that is open to all who could fulfill the requirements of said position, is benefited by the compensation received, and everyone else benefits from the work done by the person in that position. If any non-compensated party does not benefit from this position, the compensation of one cannot outweigh the disadvantages of others.
Economics, Agreements, and the Veil of Darkness
Rawls takes more of a fundamentally economic route in explaining his proof rather than trying to use some sort of induction utilizing a priori principles. I mention economics as he uses economic theory as a base for his argument. He claims that people are self-interested individually and mutually; however, they are only mutually self interested when acting in relation to the group they are mutually interested in - when acting in the interests of a firm if you will. Similar firms could be assumed to have similar needs. These firms are rational, and will accept what is in their abilities to accomplish in the long term. Any decisions made with other firms are binding, and as such, firms will be wary of making a decision that while advantageous in the short run, may not be in the future. The implication being that the decisions made would be good for all firms involved.
Between two firms, an equilibrium point must be met in agreements, maximizing utility for the firms involved at the allocatively efficient value. For each individual firm, this is not the best personal outcome, but the best outcome overall. Morality would dictate that holding to this equilibrium, even when disadvantageous, is a moral action. In economic terms, this is analogous to maximizing revenue instead of maximizing profit. When one firm chooses to act in such a way that does not meet the equilibrium agreed upon, it strikes other firms as both unfair and incorrect.
In the case of the equilibrium being at a point where one firm feels taken advantage of, there is likely some kind of externality that is causing the equilibrium principles to fall incorrectly. The correction of this externality is required for the return to a just equilibrium. To use the example of slavery, while some firms have agreed that their equilibrium principles include the use of slaves, this likely comes off as unfair to the slave firm. This external firm was not taken into account when finding the equilibrium principles, so the equilibrium is unjust.
Unfair institutions, on the other hand, refer to those practices that are voluntary.

As long as someone participates in a practice, accepts the rewards involved, and acknowledges that the rules themselves are fair, that person has a duty of sorts, Rawls refers to it as fair play , to follow those rules as they were intended. It is considered unfair to use the rules as if there were some kind of tool to be exploited for the benefit of self, for example, applying the rules to situations where they really shouldn’t apply, or following the letter of the rule to not apply them to situations where they really should be applied. Accepting benefit without honoring responsibility, the concept of riding free, is also an unfair act according to Rawls. In general, this is not to say that someone should or would sacrifice their own interests, but that it is fair for them to honor the commitment that they had made.
To act in fair play is to acknowledge that others are also people - the acceptance that others have similar interests, aspirations, and abilities. Acting in fair play implies that others are more than some kind of ultra-complex automaton to be interacted with at will. An equilibrium of ideas is useful and required for justice, but that point would never be reached without a recognition of

personhood.
To this end, the concept of an unknowable initial position is brought forward. From birth, any person could be you. That is to say, our initial position in the world it is decided by lottery essentially, the result of that lottery hidden behind a veil of darkness. As that is the case, it should be obvious that in the same way we want to minimize risk when making decisions between firms in order to account for future changes in decision value, we would also want those already in the world to minimize the risk that we end up in a particularly disadvantageous position. In life this would translate to accepting others as a kind of alternate self, thus, helping others in a position we could conceivably be in would still be considered self-interested. We would want to be in a society where no matter where we ended, it wouldn’t be terrible for us personally.
Justice, Fairness, and Utilitarianism
The classic utilitarian view states that, in brief, that the social total utility is a sum of all individual utility derived from the actions taken by those individuals. Differences, be they physical or otherwise, are ignored and as such, each person would apply themselves equally to the final value. This would imply, due to the corollary of diminishing returns (this theory states that the more of one pleasure gained, the less each individual pleasure is worth) that every person in a good society should have an equal amount of monetary resources given to them as to maximize total utility. This conception, however, seems to leave out the idea of unity present in Rawls’ Justice as Fairness. While classical utilitarianism would see each individual as yet another place to allocate resources and burdens onto, it ignores the relations those individuals have with each other, and the satisfaction or dissatisfaction those interactions bring. In purely utilitarian terms, driving in a car might give 6 units of utility to the driver. This, however, would ignore the burden placed on society as a whole by the usage of petroleum. In Rawls perception, this might be fair if the benefit of citizens driving cars outweighed the costs of doing so and every citizen could conceivably obtain a car, but utilitarianism would never even have asked the question.
Conversely, Utilitarianism is forced to ask questions that Justice as Fairness would never have to. To bring up the example of slavery once more, while utilitarianism would have to compare the relative utility of having slaves and not having slaves (how you would measure this is beyond my ken), Justice as fairness would make it immediately clear that the institution of slavery is incorrect as it can hardly be said to be an institution created for the good of all. That is not to say that Rawls is stating that all classical utilitarians believe in slavery, merely that the framework is wrong if a question alike to that can even be asked.
I have a slight umbrage with that sentiment, however. The ability to ask a certain type of question does not seem to me incorrect. I’ll take Rawls’ previous example of slaves to try to explain this. Let us say that a new type of robot is created which is more productive, but not as useful to its creators, when left alone. It is sufficiently advanced to a point where calling it a ‘person’ under Rawls definition would not be wholly inaccurate, as it is for all intellectual purposes, at least human. Would using these robots for human ends be just? If it could be considered a person you couldn’t even ask it would be so unjust, as is the case with slaves. But then, what reason could we have for creating these ultra-intelligent AI if it’s not just for humans to actually use them? Are we not allowed dominion over our own creation? The framework Rawls set up just seems too limiting when asking these sorts of questions.
Additionally, while he criticizes classical utilitarianism for acting as an entrepreneur would, maximizing revenue through the investment into individuals, he himself seems to be doing the exact same thing, with the qualifier that it must not harm anyone involved. Rawls wishes to separate himself more than he managed to; in the derivation of his principles, he still returned to the concept of allocative efficiency, even if he avoided those exact words. He simply broadened the utilitarian scope to something approaching modern economic theory applied to morality, and specifically justice. Overall, however, the idea that each institution should help every person involved is a net positive inclusion into utilitarian thought. “The Greater Good” always seems to ring hollow when you yourself cannot be a part of that ‘greater’ population.
Rawls suggests in his writings that certain things are always unjust if they harm a subset of the human population. It seems plausible that through the lens of Justice as Fairness, that human slavery is always wrong. However, with the information presented, this does not seem generalizable to all situations involving that kind of action. While not necessarily superior to utilitarianism, I would admit that Rawls does adequately explain the modification of utilitarianism, and the use of said modification.