Rawlsian Standards of Social Justice

RAWLSIAN STANDARDS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE John Rawls’ A Theory on Justice establishes standards by which we may evaluate justice in society. In assessing the United States in light of the Rawlsian principles of social justice, it is evident that America falls short of these standards, and yet this discord tolerated in America. While this incongruity does in fact affect the lives of many Americans, particularly the underpriviledged, in practice very little is done to lessen inequality so as to achieve the Rawlsian ideal of social justice in America. As a starting premise, Rawls lays out two principles of justice. The first is that “each person is to have equal rights to the most extensive basic liberties compatible with similar liberties for others” . This principle is essentially absolute, and may not be violated even for the sake of the second principle. Rawls’ second principle of justice is that “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged such that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all”1. Thus, it follows that injustices are inequalities that are not to the advantage of all. Interpretations of this second principle, and particularly of the phrase “to everyone’s advantage” is the basis of different system of equality. The first interpretation of Rawls’ second principle is the efficiency principle, from which follows the system of liberal equality. The efficiency principle states that a configuration is efficient when it is impossible to alter the configuration so as to make some persons better off without making others worse off. For any given scenario, there are many possible configurations that are efficient, but according to this principle none are better than others. Evidently, the efficiency principle cannot on its own be a measure for justice. The system of liberal equality attempts to add a component of justice to the efficiency principle by implementing