A theory of Justice: Revised Edition

PART TWO. INSTITUTIONS

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CHAPTER IV. EQUAL LIBERTY
In the three chapters of Part Two my aim is to illustrate the content of the
principles of justice. I shall do this by describing a basic structure that
satisfies these principles and by examining the duties and obligations to
which they give rise. The main institutions of this structure are those of a
constitutional democracy. I do not argue that these arrangements are the
only ones that are just. Rather my intention is to show that the principles
of justice, which so far have been discussed in abstraction from institu-
tional forms, define a workable political conception, and are a reasonable
approximation to and extension of our considered judgments. In this
chapter I begin by setting out a four-stage sequence that clarifies how the
principles for institutions are to be applied. Two parts of the basic struc-
ture are briefly described and the concept of liberty defined. After this,
three problems of equal liberty are discussed: equal liberty of conscience,
political justice and equal political rights, and equal liberty of the person
and its relation to the rule of law. I then take up the meaning of the prior-
ity of liberty, and conclude with a brief account of the Kantian interpreta-
tion of the original position.
31. THE FOUR-STAGE SEQUENCE
31. The Four-Stage Sequence
It is evident that some sort of framework is needed to simplify the appli-
cation of the two principles of justice. For consider three kinds of judg-
ments that a citizen has to make. First of all, he must judge the justice of
legislation and social policies. But he also knows that his opinions will
not always coincide with those of others, since men’s judgments and
beliefs are likely to differ especially when their interests are engaged.
Therefore secondly, a citizen must decide which constitutional arrange-
ments are just for reconciling conflicting opinions of justice. We may
think of the political process as a machine which makes social decisions
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when the views of representatives and their constituents are fed into it. A
citizen will regard some ways of designing this machine as more just than
others. So a complete conception of justice is not only able to assess laws
and policies but it can also rank procedures for selecting which political
opinion is to be enacted into law. There is still a third problem. The citi-
zen accepts a certain constitution as just, and he thinks that certain tradi-
tional procedures are appropriate, for example, the procedure of majority
rule duly circumscribed. Yet since the political process is at best one of
imperfect procedural justice, he must ascertain when the enactments of
the majority are to be complied with and when they can be rejected as no
longer binding. In short, he must be able to determine the grounds and
limits of political duty and obligation. Thus a theory of justice has to deal
with at least three types of questions, and this indicates that it may be
useful to think of the principles as applied in a several-stage sequence.
At this point, then, I introduce an elaboration of the original position.
So far I have supposed that once the principles of justice are chosen the