Revision summary
Rawls rebuilds the social contract as a choice of principles behind a veil of ignorance. The liberal side is equal basic liberties with lexical priority, plus respect for persons as ends rather than a utilitarian aggregate. The egalitarian side is fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle, which permits inequality only if it benefits the least advantaged. Political Liberalism later seeks an overlapping consensus among reasonable doctrines without a state religion of the good. Nozick, Cohen, Sen, and Dworkin attack or extend the hybrid, which shows that justice as fairness is both liberal and egalitarian by design.
Model answer
Introduction
John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971) rebuilt social-contract theory for a society of free and equal persons. He used liberal tools — rights, the priority of liberty, a hypothetical agreement — to reach egalitarian principles that Nozick would later reject as patterned redistribution. The theory is liberal and egalitarian at once, which is the point of the question.
Body
The liberal architecture
Rawls asks what principles persons would choose in an original position behind a veil of ignorance, not knowing their class, talent, sex, or conception of the good. This is liberalism’s respect for persons as ends, in a Kantian register, without imposing one religious or perfectionist doctrine. The first principle is equal basic liberties: conscience, association, political liberty, the rule of law. These liberties have lexical priority. They are not to be traded for economic advantage, which is Rawls’s answer to a crude utilitarianism that might sacrifice a minority’s rights for aggregate welfare.
The priority of the right over the good, later restated in Political Liberalism as an overlapping consensus among reasonable comprehensive doctrines, keeps the state from becoming a church. Isaiah Berlin’s fear of a single positive liberty is met by protecting a scheme of equal liberties rather than one official flourishing.
The egalitarian architecture
Persons in the original position would not stop at formal liberty. They would insist on fair equality of opportunity: offices and schools open not only in law but in social fact, against a caste of birth. They would then choose the difference principle: social and economic inequalities are allowed only if they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, attached to offices open to all.
This is egalitarian because the benchmark is those who fare worst, and still liberal because inequality may remain if it raises the floor. Nozick attacks entitlement; Cohen says Rawls is too soft on the talented; Sen and Dworkin press on capabilities and resources. The hybrid is the design. Indian rights plus directive principles are a cousin, not a copy.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD OP[Original position / veil] --> L[Equal basic liberties] OP --> E[Fair opportunity] OP --> D[Difference principle] L --> LIB[Liberal priority of right] E --> EG[Egalitarian floor] D --> EG
Conclusion
Rawls used a liberal original position and the priority of equal liberties to justify an egalitarian pair of principles: fair opportunity and the difference principle. Justice as fairness is therefore not a compromise pasted together after the fact. It is one design in which liberal respect for persons generates a duty to those who would otherwise be left at the bottom.
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Students also ask
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Provide a comparative analysis of behavioural and institutional approach to the study of Political theory
Next question in the 2025 paper (Q3). View answer →
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Is Rawls a socialist?
He allows a property-owning democracy or liberal socialism as regimes compatible with his principles. He is not committed to Marx’s classless end-state.
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How is this egalitarian if inequalities remain?
Inequalities remain only as a justified remainder that raises the worst-off. Formal equal liberty without that test would be liberalism without fairness.
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