Issue 11   Rawls     Do rights come from God, nature, or humans?

Rawls early in his career placed his theory in the tradition of Immanuel Kant. Rawls maintained that basic rights could be derived from two principles of justice chosen from a fair-minded point of view—first, the equal liberty principle and, secondly, the principle of difference in the distribution of social goods. Both basic liberty and welfare rights, he argued, could follow from these two principles. Respect for the basic rights, Rawls claimed, should have the effect of stabilizing a democratic society.

        In his later career, Rawls partly separated his position from Kant’s. While Kant had based his moral views on a “comprehensive moral doctrine,” as Rawls described it, Rawls limited himself to addressing only a political theory of justice. He gave priority to liberty rights over welfare rights once society reached a certain minimum economic level. This reverses the Marxist solution, which assigned an enduring priority to welfare over liberty rights.

STRENGTH: The early Rawls continues the tradition of Kant in providing a compelling answer to the question of where rights come from. Basic constitutional rights are products of human choice; they do not stem from either divine revelation or natural inclinations. Humans choose the principles the ground basic rights, and they do so from a fair-minded point of view. This point of view is illustrated in the “Rawls Game” by turning the cards face down.

        WEAKNESS: Rawls assigns priority to liberty rights under some conditions. While this may help to stabilize a society in good economic times, it does not adequately address the problem of human suffering in difficult economic times. Rawls replies that a society needs to reach a certain minimum economic level before liberty rights take priority. He does not, however, adequately address the issue of how to respect liberty or welfare rights when society fails to reach or falls below the minimum economic level.  So the problem of a conflict of rights persists in Rawls’ theory much as it did in other social contract theorists—namely, Kant, Locke, and Jefferson.