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The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.

John Rawls

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John Rawls
Age: 81 †
Born: 1921
Born: February 21
Died: 2002
Died: November 24
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Political Scientist
University Teacher
Baltimore
Maryland
Rawls
John Bordley Rawls
Principles
Justice
Veil
Veils
Chosen
Ignorance
Behinds
Behind

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Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
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The intolerant can be viewed as free-riders, as persons who seek the advantages of just institutions while not doing their share to uphold them.
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Liberal constitutional democracy is supposed to ensure that each citizen is free and equal and protected by basic rights and liberties.
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A scheme is unjust when the higher expectations, one or more of them, are excessive. If these expectations were decreased, the situation of the less favored would be improved.
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There is a divergence between private and social accounting that the market fails to register. One essential task of law and government is to institute the necessary conditions.
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An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.
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At best the principles that economists have supposed the choices of rational individuals to satisfy can be presented as guidelines for us to consider when we make our decisions.
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The question is, we have a particular problem. How many religions are there in the United States? How are they going to get on together? One way, which has been the usual way historically, is to fight it out, as in France in the sixteenth century. That's a possibility.
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A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable.
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When the basic structure of society is publicly known to satisfy its principles for an extended period of time, those subject to these arrangements tend to develop a desire to act in accordance with these principles and to do their part in institutions which exemplify them
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Different political views, even if they're all liberal, in the sense of supporting liberal constitutional democracy, undoubtedly have some notion of the common good in the form of the means provided to assure that people can make use of their liberties, and the like.
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I live in a country where 90 or 95 percent of the people profess to be religious, and maybe they are religious, though my experience of religion suggests that very few people are actually religious in more than a conventional sense.
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[E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
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A political conception covers the right to vote, the political virtues, and the good of political life, but it doesn't intend to cover anything else.
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Now the good of political life is a great political good. It is not a secular good specified by a comprehensive doctrine like those of Kant or Mill. You could characterize this political good as the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another: the duty to give citizens public reasons for one's political actions.
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The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.
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If you compare the United States with Europe, my view is that what happened in Europe is that the church became deeply distrusted by people, because it sided with the monarchs. It instituted the Inquisition and became part of the repressive state apparatus. That never happened here. We don't have that history.
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No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
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The good of political life is the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another and supporting the institutions of a constitutional regime.
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The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.
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