Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

The Restatement presents in one place Rawls's mature account of justice as fairness, drawing on all his previous works and revised in light of the critiques and his own shift to political liberalism . The central argument remains that a just society is a fair system of cooperation among free and equal citizens, governed by two principles chosen from behind a veil of ignorance. But the restatement is not merely a summary: it reformulates the original position argument and, crucially, clarifies that the difference principle cannot be satisfied by welfare-state capitalism, which violates the principles in at least one way [citation:19].

Rawls identifies five types of social systems and argues that the first three—laissez-faire capitalism, state socialism, and welfare-state capitalism—violate the two principles of justice in at least one way [citation:19]. The two ideal descriptions that satisfy the principles are property-owning democracy and liberal socialism [citation:19]. This is a significant clarification from A Theory of Justice, which most readers took to be defending welfare-state capitalism [citation:8]. Edmundson's reconstruction argues that Rawls's reworked argument leads to socialism, revealing the radical thrust of his late work [citation:8].

A common misconception is that the Restatement simply repeats Political Liberalism in condensed form. Thaddeus Metz's review addresses the key question readers likely want answered: whether the book is useful if one is already familiar with Political Liberalism [citation:7]. The Restatement does clarify the political-liberal framework, but it also contains material absent from both earlier books, including careful replies to critics like Sandel, Sen, and Okin on issues ranging from health care to the legal status of gender differences [citation:17]. It is Rawls's final integrated statement, not a digest.

The book originated as lectures Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s, which over time became a systematic restatement of his theory [citation:1]. As he writes in the preface, the restatement presents 'in one place an account of justice as fairness as I now see it, drawing on all [my previous] works' [citation:1]. The aim was clarity and integration: to offer a broad overview of his main lines of thought while exploring specific issues never before addressed in his writings [citation:1]. Erin Kelly edited the volume while Rawls was in declining health during his final years [citation:19].

Critics note that while the book is more accessible and concise than A Theory of Justice, it remains dense and demanding for non-specialists [citation:6]. Some reviewers find it overly theoretical in places [citation:6]. A more substantive criticism concerns the tension between the Restatement's radical institutional conclusions and its abstract argumentative style: Rawls argues that property-owning democracy and liberal socialism are required, but he does not provide a detailed blueprint for either, leaving the transition from existing capitalist societies largely to his non-ideal theory [citation:8]. The book's strength—its systematic clarity—is also a limitation.

The book has been regarded as Rawls's final statement of his theory and is frequently used as an accessible introduction to his mature political philosophy [citation:19]. Reviewers praised it as 'an exemplary work in every way,' with Simon Blackburn writing in the Times Literary Supplement that 'anybody convinced that political thought is all about disguised power, or rhetoric, or ideology in the bad sense of the word, should confront this book' [citation:17]. Scholars note it clarifies concepts introduced in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, particularly public reason and property-owning democracy [citation:19].