Rawls attempted to show that principles of justice cannot be based solely on an individual’s moral framework. Rather, they are based on the way the individual’s sense of morality is expressed and preserved in social institutions—such as the education system, the healthcare system, the tax collection system, and the electoral system. Rawls was particularly concerned with the process by which wealth inequalities translated into different levels of political influence, with the result that the structure of social and political institutions was inherently biased in favor of wealthy individuals and corporations.

Writing at the time of the Vietnam War, which he considered an unjust war, Rawls argued that civil disobedience needs to be understood as the necessary action of a just minority appealing to the conscience of the majority. He argued against the government’s policies of conscription, which allowed wealthy students to dodge the draft while poorer students were often taken into the army because of one failed grade. The translation of economic inequalities into discriminatory institutions such as conscription was deeply troubling to him, particularly when those institutions were the very bodies that purported to implement or act on behalf of justice.

Principles of justice must be based on more than just individual morality, according to Rawls. The entire framework of society must be taken into account when formulating a system of justice.

To Rawls, for justice to exist, it has to be considered “fair” according to certain principles of equality. In his theory of justice-as-fairness, Rawls develops two main principles of justice. The first is that everyone has an equal claim to basic liberties. The second is that “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and attached to positions and offices open to all.” The first principle—the principle of liberty—takes priority over the second principle—the principle of difference. He justifies this by arguing that, as economic conditions improve due to civilization’s advancement, questions of liberty become more important. There are few, if any, instances where it is to an individual’s or a group’s advantage to accept a lesser liberty for the sake of greater material means.

  Rawls identifies certain social and economic privileges as “threat advantages.” He calls these “de facto political power, or wealth, or native endowments,” and they allow certain people to take more than a just share, much as a school bully might take lunch money from other students by virtue of being bigger than them. Inequality—and the advantages based on this inequality—could not lie at the basis of any principle or theory of justice. Since inequalities are part of the reality of any society, Rawls concludes that “the arbitrariness of the world must be corrected for by adjusting the circumstances of the initial contractual situation.” By “contractual situation,” he means a social contract between individuals—both with each other and with all the institutions of the state, even including the family. However, this social contract involves agreements between individuals on an unequal footing. Since the state has an equal responsibility toward each citizen, justice can only be secured if this inequality is corrected at its root.

  For Rawls, social institutions are key to making this correction—by ensuring that all individuals have equal access to them, and by developing a redistribution mechanism that makes everyone better off. Rawls considers liberalism and liberal democracies to be the political systems best suited to ensuring that this redistribution is done fairly. He believed that communist systems focus too much on complete equality without considering whether that equality produces the most good for everyone. He thought that a capitalist system with strong social institutions is more likely to secure a fair system of justice. Where capitalism would produce unfair outcomes left on its own, social institutions imbued with a strong sense of justice can correct it.

Rawls sees a further role for just institutions in binding society together. He believes that one of the most important lessons of modernity is that it is possible to live together under common rules without necessarily sharing a common moral code—as long as all individuals share a moral commitment to the structure of society. If people agree that the structure of society is fair, they will be satisfied, despite living among people who might possess significantly different moral codes. This, for Rawls, is the basis of pluralist, multicultural societies, and social institutions are key to ensuring fairness in such complex social systems.

Rawls argues that, initially, the principles underpinning redistribution need to be decided behind what he calls “a veil of ignorance.” He imagines a situation in which the structure of an ideal society is being decided, but none of those deciding on that structure knows what their place in the society will be. The “veil of ignorance” means that nobody knows the social position, personal doctrine, or intellectual or physical attributes they themselves will have. They might belong to any gender, sexual orientation, race, or class. In this way, the veil of ignorance ensures that everyone—independent of social position and individual characteristics—is granted justice: those deciding on their circumstances must, after all, be happy to put themselves in their position. Rawls assumed that, from behind the veil of ignorance, the social contract would necessarily be constructed to help the least well-off members of society, since everyone is ultimately afraid of becoming poor and will want to construct social institutions that protect against this.

Rawls accepts that differences in society are likely to persist, but argues that a fair principle of justice would offer the greatest benefit to the least advantaged members of society. Other scholars, including Indian theorist Amartya Sen and Canadian Marxist Gerald Cohen, have questioned Rawls’s belief in the potential of a liberal capitalist regime to ensure these principles are adhered to. They also question the benefit of the “veil of ignorance” in modern societies, where inequalities are deeply embedded in social institutions. A veil of ignorance is only of value, many argue, if you are in the position of starting from scratch.

Sen believes that Rawls makes a false distinction between political and economic rights. For Sen, inequalities and deprivation are largely a result of the absence of an entitlement to some goods, rather than the absence of the goods themselves. He uses the example of the Bengal famine of 1943, which was caused by a rise in food prices brought about by urbanization, rather than an actual lack of food. The goods—in this case food—do not represent an advantage in themselves. Instead, the advantage is defined by the relationship between people and goods—those who could afford food at the higher price versus those who could not. Sen further argues that the social contract in Rawls’s definition is flawed, since it assumes that the contract only occurs at an interpersonal level. He argues that the social contract is instead negotiated through the interests of a number of groups not directly party to the contract, such as foreigners, future generations, and even nature itself.

For Rawls, equal access for all to institutions such as public libraries is essential for a fair society, allowing everyone the same life chances regardless of their place in society.

Gerald Cohen questions the trust Rawls places in liberalism. Cohen argues that liberalism’s obsession with self-interest maximization is not compatible with the egalitarian intentions of the redistributive state policy that Rawls argues for. He sees inequality as intrinsic to capitalism, and not simply a result of an unfair state-redistribution system. Capitalism and liberalism, for Cohen, can never provide the “fair” solution that Rawls was looking for.

  Despite these criticisms, Rawls’s Theory of Justice remains one of the most influential contemporary works of political theory, and is still the bestselling book published by Harvard University Press. His ideas have spurred a series of debates on the restructuring of the modern welfare system, both in the US and across the world. Many of his former students, including Sen, are at the core of these debates. In recognition of his contribution to social and political theory, Rawls was presented with the National Humanities Medal in 1999 by President Bill Clinton, who stated that his work had helped to revive faith in democracy itself.

The Bengal famine was caused by unequal economic relations between people. Rawls’s system, centered on political rather than economic structures, appears not to explain such disasters.