John Rawls Theory Of Justice

With the issue of income inequality becoming more salient in present day politics, it has been argued that the United States is doing little to ensure equality of opportunity. Many economists today point to low levels of intergenerational social and economic mobility as evidence of these trends. Philosopher John Rawls’ second principle of justice states that inequalities can exist in society as long as they improve the general wellbeing of the least well off members of society. However, current inequalities in income and opportunities in the United States have been said to violate Rawls second principle of justice, because of their inability to provide the least well off members of society with an improvement in wellbeing. In this paper, I will delineate the argument underlying Rawls second principle, as well as its background, conditions and requirements and justify why Rawls would be correct to assume that current inequalities in income and opportunity in the United States are unjust in regards to the wellbeing of citizens.

John Rawls theory of Justice begins with the notion of Justice as fairness. This concept provides a framework for the rightful use of

However, in the original position, two conditions would eliminate unnecessary influence by mandating that parties representing citizens be 1) Rational and mutually disinterested (meaning that parties favor more benefits of social cooperation than less) and 2) maintain equal bargaining power. These conditions in the original position hypothetically allow a fair bargaining situation and Rawls argues that the ‘right’ principles to govern the basic structure of society would be chosen under these conditions. The guiding idea of the original position is that all citizens are fundamentally equal; therefore justice should begin from the presumption that all benefits of social cooperation should be equally