Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.

Greater intelligence, wealth and opportunity, for example, allow a person to achieve ends he could not rationally contemplate otherwise.

The difference principle, for example, requires that the higher expectations of the more advantaged contribute to the prospects of the least advantaged.

No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.

If A were not allowed his better position, B would be even worse off than he is.

First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its particular economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong.

There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.

The circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary.

First of all, principles should be general. That is, it must be possible to formulate them without use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions.

The claims of existing social arrangements and of self interest have been duly allowed for. We cannot at the end count them a second time because we do not like the result.

To each according to his threat advantage does not count as a principle of justice.

I have assumed throughout that the persons in the original position are rational.

Inequalities are permissible when they maximize, or at least all contribute to, the long term expectations of the least fortunate group in society.

Yet it seems extraordinary that the justice of increasing the expectations of the better placed by a billion dollars, say, should turn on whether the prospects of the least favored increase or decrease by a penny.

We may reject the contention that the ordering of institutions is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carry over to human arrangements. Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if the refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on a par with being unable to accept death. 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. Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the ascriptive basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes. The basic structure of these societies incorporates the arbitrariness found in nature. But there is no necessity for men to resign themselves to these contingencies. The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action. In justice as fairness men agree to avail themselves of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benefit. The two principles are a fair way of meeting the arbitrariness of fortune; and while no doubt imperfect in other ways, the institutions which satisfy these principles are just.

The even larger difference between rich and poor makes the latter even worse off, and this violates the principle of mutual advantage.

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.

The concept of justice I take to be defined, then, by the role of its principles in assigning rights and duties and in defining the appropriate division of social advantages. A conception of justice is an interpretation of this role.

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

Social and economic inequalities, for example inequalities of wealth and authority, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society.

It may be expedient but it is not just that some should have less in order that others may prosper.

A conception of justice cannot be deduced from self evident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitted together into one coherent view.

Indeed, it is tempting to suppose that it is self evident that things should be so arranged so as to lead to the most good.

An individual who finds that he enjoys seeing others in positions of lesser liberty understands that he has no claim whatever to this enjoyment.

An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.

We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception.

Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable.

Our concern is solely with the basic structure of society and its major institutions and therefore with the standard cases of social justice.

The first statement of the two principles reads as follows. First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both(a)reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.

In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class.

We must not be enticed by mathematically attractive assumptions into pretending that the contingencies of men's social positions and the asymmetries of their situations somehow even out in the end. Rather we must choose our conception of justice fully recognizing that this is not and cannot be the case.

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

Many conservative writers have contended that the tendency to equality in modern social movements is the expression of envy. In this way they seek to discredit this trend, attributing it to collectively harmful impulses.

That persons have opposing interests and seek to advance their own conception of the good is not at all the same thing as their being moved by envy and jealousy.

Men resign themselves to their position should it ever occur to them to question it; and since all may view themselves as assigned their vocation, everyone is held to be equally fated and equally noble in the eyes of providence.

Being happy involves both a certain achievement in action and a rational assurance about the outcome.

The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.

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.

The hazards of the generalized prisoner's dilemma are removed by the match between the right and the good.

I have tried to set forth a theory that enables us to understand and to assess these feelings about the primacy of justice. Justice as fairness is the outcome: it articulates these opinions and supports their general tendency.

Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.

Why then in Britain has secularism become seen to be hostile to religion? Because neutrality is too often assumed to require the bleaching out of all traces of faith, excluding religious belief and discourse from public life. But it doesn't, and we can see why by appeal to the notion of public reason, articulated most clearly by the late political philosopher John Rawls. Rawls was quite clear that the religious have no obligation at all to keep their faith entirely to themselves. "Reasonable comprehensive doctrines, religious or non-religious, may be introduced in public political discussion at any time," he wrote, "provided that in due course proper political reasons – and not reasons given solely by comprehensive doctrines – are presented that are sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines are said to support."

The key innovation in Rawl's scenario, designed to ensure that undue selfishness among the participants in this exercise in reflection cancels itself out, is what he calls the "veil of ignorance". Everyone gets to vote on a favored design of society, but when you decide which society you would be happy to live in and give your allegiance to, you vote without knowing your particular role or niche in it will be. You may be a senator or a surgeon or a street sweeper or a soldier; you don't get to find out until after you have voted. Choosing from behind the veil of ignorance ensures that people will give due consideration to the likely effects, the costs and benefits, for all the citizenry, including those worse off.

If the basic assumption of the theory of ideology is at all tenable, namely, that the general power relations embodied in our social structures can exert a distorting influence on the formation of our beliefs and preferences without our being aware of it, then we are definitely not going to put that kind of influence out of action by asking the agents in the society to imagine that they didn’t know their position. To think otherwise is to believe in magic: imagine you are “impartial” and you will be. In fact, doing that will be more likely to reinforce the power of these entrenched prejudices because it will explicitly present them as universal, warranted by reason, etc.

The idea that seems to be presupposed by the doctrine of the veil of ignorance—namely, that one can in some way get a better grasp or understanding of the power relations in society and how they work by covering them up, ignoring them, or simply wishing them away—seems very naïve. … To think that an appropriate point of departure for understanding the political world is our intuitions of what is “just,” without reflecting on where those intuitions come from, how they are maintained, and what interests they might serve, seems to exclude from the beginning the very possibility that these intuitions might themselves be “ideological.”

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.

Ideal legislators do not vote their interests.

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.

Justice as fairness provides what we want.

The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.