Rawls,rules and objectives: A critique of the two principles of justice

John Rawls has made two large claims for the two principles of justice: that they are what everyman would choose behind the veil of ignorance as the foundation for laws and institutions, and that they are the rock bottom requirement for the stability of political liberalism. I argue here that these claims are altogether unsubstantiated. The two principles are more like a social welfare function than like what we ordinary think of as justice. They are a false social welfare function in the sense that everyman would not choose them behind the veil of ignorance. Their connection with the stability of liberal democratic government is tenuous at best. Stability is dependent on the entire corpus of rules by which a society is guided, rules that are no more identifiable behind the veil of ignorance than when the veil is lifted. There no basis for supposing that the appropriate rules can be derived from the two principles of justice, and there is some question as to whether they can be derived from any well-specified social welfare function. What remains valid in the two principles was recognized long before the two principles were enunciated. The exaggeration of common ideas in the two principles is not enlightening.