Introduction

John Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland, 21 February 1921, to William Lee and Anna Abele Stump Rawls. He was the second of five sons, two of whom died in childhood. He grew up in Baltimore, where his father practiced law. John Rawls’s mother came from an established and once well-to-do Baltimore family. She was an intelligent and accomplished woman, and an early President of the new League of Women Voters in Baltimore.