John Rawls, 1921-

Modern Harvard philosopher.  In his most famous book, Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls proposed the idea of "original position", a mental exercise whereby a group of rational people must establish a principle of fairness (such as distribution of income) without knowing beforehand where on the resulting pecking order they will end up themselves. Rawls used this device to argue that the optimal arrangement will be to "maximize the welfare of society's worse-off member", which effectively justifies an egalitarian "no-substitution" social welfare function.

Major works of John Rawls

• "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics", 1951, Philosophical Review 
• "Two Concepts of Rules" 1955, Philosophical Review
• "Justice as Fairness", 1957, J of Philosophy
• "The Sense of Justice", 1963, Philosophical Review
• "Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice" 1963,  Friedrich and Chapman, eds., Nomos, VI: Justice
• "Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play", 1964, in S. Hook, ed., Law and Philosophy
• "Distributive Justice", 1967,  in Laslett and Runciman, eds., Philosophy, Politics, and Society
• "The Justification of Civil Disobedience", 1969, in Bedau, ed., Civil Disobedience
• Theory of Justice, 1971.
• "Justice as Reciprocity", 1971, in Gorovitz, ed., Utilitarianism
• "Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play", 1971, in Murphy, ed., Civil Disobedience and Violence
• "Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion", 1974, AER
• "Fairness to Goodness", 1975, Philosophical Review
• "A Kantian Conception of Equality", 1975, Cambridge Review
• "The Basic Structure as Subject.", 1977, American Philosophical Quarterly
• "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory" 1980, Journal of Philosophy
• "The Basic Liberties and Their Priority", 1982, in McMurrin, ed., Tanner Lectures on Human Values
• "Social Unity and Primary Goods", 1982,  in A. Sen and B. Wiliams, eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond
• "The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus", 1987, Oxford Journal for Legal Studies
• "The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good.", 1988, Philosophy & Public Affairs 
• "The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus", 1989, NYU Law Review
• "Themes in Kant's Moral Philosophy", 1989, in Forster, ed., Kant's Transcendental Deductions
• The Law of Peoples", 1993, Critical Inquiry
• Political Liberalism, 1993
• The Law of the Peoples, 1999
• Collected Papers, 1999
• Lecture on the History of Moral Philosophy, with Barbara Hermann, 2000

Resources on John Rawls

• HET Pages: Paretian System: the Social Optimum 
• John Rawls Homepage at Harvard (Philosophy dept.)
• John Rawls's Homepage at Harvard (Center for Ethics and the Professions)
• John Rawls: A Selected Bibliography
• "John Rawls's Theory of Justice" - slideshow by Allan Blackman
• "Original Position" at International Encycl. of Philosophy
• "John Rawls and Justice as Fairness" by Loren A. King
• "Portrait: John Rawls" by Ben Rogers, 1999, Prospect 
• "Behind the Veil: John Rawls's Revival of Liberalism", by Ben Rogers, Lingua Franca
• "John Rawls: A Calvinist After-Image" by Michael Weinstein
• "John Rawls's Political Liberalism" by Ted Vaggalis
• "Notes on the contrast between Habermas and Rawls" by Thomas McCarthy, 1994
• "Rawls’s Strangely Apolitical Political Liberalism" by Thomas Bridges
• "Rawlsian Reasonableness and the Creation of Citizens" by Thomas Bridges
• "Rawls and the Rethinking of the Priority of the Right over the Good" by Thomas Bridges 
• "Post-Metaphysical Liberalism: The Case of Rawls" by Thomas Bridges
• "John Rawls: Liberty" by R.J. Kilcullen 
• "Review of Rawls' Collected Papers" by Andrew Carpenter
• Life and Work of John Rawls by Lynette Sweidel
• Rawlsian Liberalism by R. Johnson
• Rawlsian Glossary at Stanford
• Rawlsian Glossary at Brisbane, UK
• John Rawls's biography
• John Rawls timeline
• John Rawls at Philosophy Pages
• John Rawls page at Erratic Impact
• Rawls's Theory of Justice at Applied Ethics
• John Rawls page at the Public Philosopher
• Rawls page at Thinkquest
• Theory of Justice Outline by Darrell Huwe 
• Discussion page on Rawls's theory