Rawls modifies and develops the principles of justice throughout his book. In chapter forty-six, Rawls makes his final clarification on the two principles of justice:
1. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.[4]
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
- (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and
- (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.[4]
The first principle is often called the greatest equal liberty principle. Part (a) of the second principle is referred to as the difference principle while part (b) is referred to as the equal opportunity principle.[1]
Rawls orders the principles of justice lexically, as follows: 1, 2b, 2a.[4] The greatest equal liberty principle takes priority, followed by the equal opportunity principle and finally the difference principle. The first principle must be satisfied before 2b, and 2b must be satisfied before 2a. As Rawls states: "A principle does not come into play until those previous to it are either fully met or do not apply."[5] Therefore, the equal basic liberties protected in the first principle cannot be traded or sacrificed for greater social advantages (granted by 2(b)) or greater economic advantages (granted by 2a).[6]
The greatest equal liberty principle
- Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all (1).[4]
The greatest equal liberty principle is mainly concerned with the distribution of rights and liberties. Rawls identifies the following equal basic liberties: "political liberty (the right to vote and hold public office) and freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person, which includes freedom from psychological oppression and physical assault and dismemberment (integrity of the person); the right to hold personal property and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law."[7]
It is a matter of some debate whether freedom of contract can be inferred to be included among these basic liberties: "liberties not on the list, for example, the right to own certain kinds of property and freedom of contract as understood by the doctrine of laissez-faire are not basic; and so they are not protected by the priority of the first principle.".[8]
The difference principle
- Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society, consistent with the just savings principle (2a).[4]
Rawls' claim in (a) is that departures from equality of a list of what he calls primary goods—"things which a rational man wants whatever else he wants"[9] are justified only to the extent that they improve the lot of those who are worst-off under that distribution in comparison with the previous, equal, distribution. His position is at least in some sense egalitarian, with a provision that inequalities are allowed when they benefit the least advantaged. An important consequence of Rawls' view is that inequalities can actually be just, as long as they are to the benefit of the least well off. His argument for this position rests heavily on the claim that morally arbitrary factors (for example, the family one is born into) should not determine one's life chances or opportunities. Rawls is also oriented to an intuition that a person does not morally deserve their inborn talents; thus, that one is not entitled to all the benefits they could possibly receive from them; hence, at least one of the criteria which could provide an alternative to equality in assessing the justice of distributions is eliminated.
Further, the just savings principle requires that some sort of material respect is left for future generations. Although Rawls is ambiguous about what this means, it can generally be understood as "a contribution to those coming later".[10]
The equal opportunity principle
- Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity (2b).[4]
The stipulation in 2b is lexically prior to that in 2a. This is because equal opportunity requires not merely that offices and positions are distributed on the basis of merit, but that all have reasonable opportunity to acquire the skills on the basis of which merit is assessed, even if one might not have the necessary material resources - due to a beneficial inequality stemming from the difference principle.
It may be thought that this stipulation, and even the first principle of justice, may require greater equality than the difference principle, because large social and economic inequalities, even when they are to the advantage of the worst-off, will tend to seriously undermine the value of the political liberties and any measures towards fair equality of opportunity.
