Justice And Injustice In John Rawls A Theory Of Justice

The state of nature is the state in which man first existed. The right to property consists of whether individuals have a defensible right to a certain form of property, whether it be wealth, objects, or land. Social inequality consists of inequality between citizens in political society resulting from differences in property. All references to inequality herein are to social inequality, not to any other type. Finally, for the purpose of brevity, all references to governments are references to governments formed by the consent of the governed unless separately denoted.

(1995, 12) Freedom in Rawlsian theory makes sense at that point where man can develop and pursue their own reasonable conception of the good. In this respect, Rawls’ theory of justice traces a distinction between what is rational for individuals and what is reasonable. Reasonable persons in Rawls’ sense “are not moved by the general good as such but desire for its own sake world in which they, as free and equal, can cooperate with others on terms all can accept” (Rawls 1993: 50). Thus his idea of cooperation is based on reciprocity which necessitates the idea of mutual self-interestedness (Rawls, 1958, 170). This is how Rawls identifies the justice; “justice is the virtue of practices where there are assumed to be competing interests and conflicting claims, and where it is supposed that persons will press their rights on each other.

It denied the states to discriminate in application of laws but followed the doctrine of separate but equal

On the other hand, while philosopher Robert Nozick paid a generous tribute to the brilliance of Rawls’ philosophical construction, he provides a rejection to Rawls’ claims from a libertarian perspective. Libertarians have the desire to divide and limit power. That is, government will be limited generally through a written constitution limiting the powers that the people delegate to government (Boaz, 2015). Nozick stated that Rawls’ idea would have resulted in the restriction of free choice or forced distribution within the society.

Friedman analyses and concludes that in his article, the equality is “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” (266). The reason why all persons are created equal is that God created us and gave us intrinsic value that we speak of in terms of “right” language. For me, I agree with Friedman’s point that he mentions “All men are created equal”, but not “Equality before God” because I am not a Christian. We are all people that have the same human characters, which means we have the same privilege and rights as humans. No matter what religions we are, we still have the same basic rights and opportunities; no matter what status we are since we were born, it happens before the premise of justice, which is most

In this essay, it is argued that to achieve a truly fair conception of justice that could be applied to social and economic structure of society is only possible from the initial position of equality that ensures a complete dissociation from any knowledge about personal position in the society. Such a conception of justice leads to a just society that equally distributes the benefits of every member of such a community (Rawls, 1999: 3-19). This essay first elaborates on Rawls’s understanding of justice. The next part addresses why and how the veil of ignorance is crucial for the original position of equality and the importance of difference-principle emerging from this position.

NATURALISTIC THEORIES Robert Nozick’s view of the inviolable freedom of individuals and of the absolute control of property in the self and its possessions and the natural rights which constitute the foundation of a libertarian and well-ordered society revived the natural rights theory Nozick’s writings anarchy, state and utopia in particular has opening sentence “individuals have rights which expresses their separate existence, according to the Kantian principal that individuals are

In the Declaration of Independence, there is a famous phrase that is saying that all human are created equally and similarly—regardless of his or her race, skin color, religion etc. The phrase also implies that life, liberty and happiness are three examples of unalienable rights that are given by the Creator and should be protect by the government. Thus, it means that the rights of equality, freedom and happiness of each of individual in the United States are not given by the government, thus it cannot been taken away. However, when we try to look at what the slaves or Black Americans faced during that time and how the white people treat black people unequally, we can say that these words in the Declaration of Independence about the unalienable rights are really contradict with what has been practiced and clearly exposed the

Rawls proposes to develop a theory of justice by revising the social contract tradition of theorizing about justice associated with the 17th and 18th century writers John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. Locke sees legitimate political authority being derived from the free and voluntary consent of the governed, from a contract or agreement between governor and those who are being governed. Rawls says he will take the social contract idea to a higher level of abstraction. According to Rawls, justice is what free and equal persons would agree to as basic terms of social cooperation in conditions that are fair for this purpose. This idea he calls "justice as fairness.

The main argument of this article comprises theories and social concepts of justice and defines implicit human obligations. Normative beliefs are sculpted by the idea of prerogative rights, which overlook the human responsibility to the well-being of all people in society. Simone Weil infers that the use of human rights objectifies what is given and allocated to an individual instead of reifying human accountability and impartiality to one another. Human rights that are specified to the individuals based on status in a community sets a negative framework of selfishness and unjust behavior that ultimately involves the absence of pure justice. According to Simone Weil, justice should be united with responsibility and obligation, which can be

The Bill of Rights plays an important part in U.S. history. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution defined the limits of government, not the people. They define what government was responsible for protecting as well as what not to restrict or take away. The Bill of Rights was designed to keep government in check, not the people. The contextual factors and societal forces that were played in the roles and the development of each document were In reference to the Bill of Rights all were considered equal.

Mills believed that society had the right to limit freedoms of the individual to engage in behaviors that affected those not engaging in the behaviors. This idea is articulated later in “On Liberty” when mill states that the “only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

The different constitutional standards have been developed by The U.S. Supreme Court to assess the validity of changes based on Due Process & Equal Protection. The Due Process includes the rights of “life, liberty and property”, it is about each citizen. However, the Equal Protection Clause includes protecting a specific group from discrimination. If the problem is about the Fundamental Rights of people, The Strict Scrutiny, the standard is used to weigh the government 's interest against a constitutional right or principle, is used but if it is about the Ordinary Rights of people, the Rational Basis Test, which requires the government to show only the action is rationally related to a legitimate government interest,

Michael Walzer talks about justice as being equal to everyone. Nobody should be above the law, regardless of their social status, etc. On a perfect world, our justice system would be equally accessible and implemented regardless of who is the accused. Everyone has the same rights. On the other hand, Kenji Yoshiko believes justice is not something you can measure.

Bernie Sanders once said “A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much, while so many have so little”. In our society, many people experience inequalities, including racial inequality, gender inequality, and economic inequality. These social inequalities create institutionalized social barricades that most times, cannot be solved without some sort of policy that advocates equity. Inequality means that people have little or unequal access to resources such as education, housing, health care, politics, and many more. It also means that people are treated unequally by society.