ABSTRACT
One of the central elements of Rawls’ argument in support of the two principles of justice is the intuitive normative ideal of citizens as free and equal.1 Rawls takes this ideal to play an important role in explaining and justifying the design of the original position. He also holds that the ideal is implicit in the public culture of contemporary democratic societies, and that it is present in the design and functioning of their political and legal institutions. For these reasons he claims that the ideal can be regarded as widely shared. Perhaps this is true. Still, taken in isolation, the claim that citizens are to be treated as free and equal is indeterminate, and has virtually no clear implications for policy. In order to remedy this, the two principles of justice, together with the stipulation that citizens have basic interests in developing their moral capacities and in pursuing their conceptions of the good life, are meant to provide a more precise and useful interpretation of what is involved in treating citizens as free and equal. The first principle of justice requires that society secure a scheme of equal basic rights and liberties for all its citizens. The second principle asserts that social and economic inequalities are permissible only when the following two conditions are met: that there is fair equality of opportunity to access desirable social positions, and that any such inequalities work to the benefit of everyone, particularly the least advantaged members of society. However, it is by no means obvious that satisfying Rawls’ two principles of justice is the most appropriate or plausible way to uphold the status of citizens as free and equal-or so argue some of Rawls’ critics. In relation to this debate, the present chapter has three aims. The first is to examine Rawls’ account of the type of freedom that a just society must guarantee equally to its citizens. I will argue that those who think of Rawls as a theorist of freedom as non-interference are mistaken, because the notion of liberty at work in the first principle of justice resembles, in important respects, a particular notion of freedom as non-domination that Philip Pettit has defended as central to the republican tradition. Second, I will consider the extent to which Rawls’ principles of justice successfully protect the freedom as non-domination of all citizens so
as to treat them effectively as free and equal. Finally, I will briefly discuss the contributions that schools might make to support the ideal of citizens as free and equal. In discussing these contributions, it will be important to keep in mind that Rawls’ political approach to the justification of policies implicitly involves a number of restrictions on the form such support can take. Although Rawls sometimes refers to liberty in general terms, it is clear
from his discussion of the notion of liberty that he has in mind a set of specific liberties that should be granted to the citizens of a just society. As we saw in chapter 2, when the principles of justice were first introduced, Rawls specifies the basic rights and liberties of citizens by means of a short list:2
1. Liberty of conscience and freedom of thought. 2. Freedom of association. 3. Equal political liberties. 4. Rights and liberties that protect the integrity and freedom of the person. 5. Rights and liberties covered by the rule of law.
