DEMOCRACY IS A DESIRABLE VALUE

DEMOCRACY IS A DESIRABLE VALUE

1. LIBERALISM ASSUMES A DEMOCRATIC IDEOLOGY

John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. xvi.

Political liberalism assumes that, for political purposes, a plurality of reasonable yet incompatible comprehensive doctrines is the normal result of the exercise of human reason within the framework of the free institutions of a constitutional democratic regime. Political liberalism also supposes that a reasonable comprehensive doctrine does not reject the essential of a democratic regime.

John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 202-3.

Thus persons are at liberty to do something when they are free from certain constraints either to do it or not to do it and when their doing it or not doing it protected from interference by other persons. If, for example, we consider liberty of conscience as defined by law, then individuals have this liberty when they are free to pursue their moral, philosophical, or religious interests without legal restrictions requiring them to engage or not to engage in any particular form of religious or other practice, and when other men have a legal duty not to interfere. A rather intricate complex of tights and duties characterizes any particular liberty. Not only must it be permissible for individuals to do or not to do something but government and other persons must have a legal duty not to obstruct I shall not delineate these rights and duties in any detail, but shall suppose that we understand their nature well enough for our purposes.
3. DEMOCRACY EFFECTIVELY ALLOCATES RESOURCES John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 176-177.

The first idea--that of goodness as rationality--is, in some variant, taken for granted by almost any political

conception of justice. This idea supposes that the members of a democratic society have, at least in an intuitive way, a rational plan of life in the light of which they schedule their more important endeavors and allocate their various resources (including those of mind, body, time and energy) so as to pursue their conceptions of the least in a sensible (or satisfactory), way.

VALUES ARE DEFINED BY SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND ACTIONS

1. DUTIES AND RIGHTS ARE DEFINED BY INSTITUTIONS John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 7.

Taken together as one scheme, the major institutions define men’s rights and duties and influence their life-prospects, what they can expect to be and how well they can hope to do. The basic structure is the primary subject of justice because its effects are so profound and present from the start. The intuitive notion here is that this structure contain various social positions and that men born into different positions have different expectations of lie determined, in part, by the political system as well as by economic and social circumstances. In this way the institutions of society favor certain starting places over others.
2. GOODNESS IS DETERMINED BY ACTION

John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 59.

One kind of injustice is the failure of judges and others in authority to adhere to the appropriate rules or interpretations theory in deciding claims. A person is unjust to the extent that from character and inclination he is disposed to such actions. Moreover, even where laws and institutions are unjust, it is often better that they should be consistently applied. In this way those subject to them at least know what is demanded and they can try to protect themselves accordingly; whereas there is even greater injustice if those already disadvantaged are also arbitrarily treated in particular cases when the rules would give them some security.
3. VALID LAWS MUST BE COMPLIED WITH

John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 350-1.

The real question is under which circumstances and to what extent we are bound to comply with unjust arrangements. Now it is sometimes said that we are never required to comply in these cases. But this is a mistake. The injustice of a law is not, in general, a sufficient reason for not adhering to it any more than the legal validity of legislation (as defined by the existing constitution) is a sufficient reason for going along with it.

VALUES SHOULD BE ASSESSED BY “JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS”

1. JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS ASSUMES INDEPENDENCE FROM PRIOR IDEOLOGIES

John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 9.

The aim of justice as fairness, then, is practical: it presents itself as a conception of justice that may be shared by citizens as a basis of a reasoned, informed, and willing political agreement It expresses their shared and public political reason. But to attain such a shared reason, the conception of justice should be, as far as possible, independent of the opposing and conflicting philosophical and religious doctrines that

citizens affirm.
2. FAIRNESS IS APPLICABLE TO POLITICAL SYSTEMS

John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, POLITICAL LIBERALISM, ¹993p. 223.

In saying a conception of justice is political I also mean three things: that it is framed to apply solely to the basic structure of society, its main political, social, and economic institutions as a unified scheme of social cooperation; that it is presented independently of any wider comprehensive religious or philosophical

doctrine; and that it is elaborated in terms of fundamental political ideas viewed as implicit in the public political culture of a democratic society.

John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 3-4.

A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and

institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot

override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others.
4. SOCIETY IS WELL-ORDERED WHEN MEETS RULES OF JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 5.

A society is well-ordered when it is not only designed to advance the good of its members but when it is also effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. That is, it is a society in which (1) everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice and (2) the basic social institutions generally satisfy and are generally known to satisfy these principles.