John Rawls’s Theory of Justice

John Rawls’s theory of justice is an attempt to reconcile calculated self-interest with basic rights. In order to define generally consensual principles of justice, in his A Theory of Justice (1971) Rawls goes back to classical theories of the social contract. He makes reference to Locke and, most particularly, to Rousseau and Kant but not to Hobbes, whose sovereignty theory he rejects.². However, Rawls is concerned not with the question of how to legitimize power but with how to shape a state in accordance with the principle of justice. The leitmotif of his theory is justice as fairness.