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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

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
Subjects
Basic
Principles
Develop
Known
Period
Exemplify
Society
Tend
Accordance
Desire
Institutions
Publicly
Part
Subject
Extended
Time
Structure
Satisfy
Periods
Arrangements

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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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A political conception just applies to the basic structure of a society, its institutions, constitutional essentials, matters of basic justice and property, and so on.
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The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.
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Of course, we know that not everyone agrees with assisted suicide, but people might agree that one has the right to it, even if they're not themselves going to exercise it.
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Political philosophy is realistically utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just Society of Peoples.
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The strength of the claims of formal justice, of obedience to system, clearly depend upon the substantive justice of institutions and the possibilities of their reform.
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The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.
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A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable.
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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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[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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An intolerant sect has no right to complain when it is denied an equal liberty... A person's right to complain is limited to principles he acknowledges himself.
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An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.
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The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.
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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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Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.
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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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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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Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.
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We must choose for others as we have reason to believe they would choose for themselves if they were at the age of reason and deciding rationally.
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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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