John Bordley Rawls: A Theory Of Justice

1.1. Biographical details of Rawls
Born into the known world on the 21st February 1921, John Bordley Rawls was the second of the five sons of William Lee and Anna Abel Rawls in Baltimore. Rawls paternal grandfather was a banker in North Carolina who suffered from tuberculosis. William Lee, Rawls’ father also suffered from tuberculosis and had a poor health throughout his adult life. During the early life of William Lee, finance was an impediment as money was scarce resulting in him not finishing high school.
At the age of 14, Rawls work as a runner in a law firm which gives him the opportunity to be self-educated using the books in the firm and passed exams without formal studies. He became a successful cooperate lawyer in the Marbury Law Firm. Rawls father, “William Lee at that time also taught in Baltimore school of law where Rawls got some of his insights. Later in 1919 he was elevated to the president of the Baltimore Bar Association making him the youngest to hold office at that time.” Rawls parents were interested in politics for which Rawls developed later in life. “William Lee was a supporter of the League of Nations and was a close associate of Albert

Rawls holds that Justice cannot come from utilitarianism since the doctrine is consistent with undesirable form of government whereby a greater happiness of the majority is achieves though pure negligence of the minority. In 1999, Rawls published the Law of Peoples which is the principle focus of this thesis which explicates and expound in depth “the political conception of right and justice in relation to international relations and its applications.” From his childhood experience of the discrimination of the children, Rawls argues that “justice consist in the basic principles of the government that free and rational individuals would agree to in the hypothetical situation of