ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a plausible liberal political conception of justice which may provide the basis for the further elaboration of a distinctively liberal theoretical framework within which the geo-classical theory of distribution can be situated. In order to make an accurate or reasonable assessment of the justice of a set of socio-economic institutions, the ideas of free moral agency and the fundamental interests of citizens in the development and exercise of their moral capacities must be properly specified and their implications fully worked out. The chapter considers the way in which John Rawls's and other social liberal conceptions of justice have been criticized by thinkers situated within the recently emerging school of 'neo-classical' liberalism. The civil and political rights and liberties are protected by both the priority of substantive opportunity and the priority of liberty as conceived by Rawls, and can feasibly be assigned special constitutional protection, if this is considered necessary.
