ABSTRACT
People have valuable personal pursuits, such as individual projects and associational and relational concerns, that need not be motivated by egalitarian considerations or be equality promoting. How should professed egalitarians balance their commitments to egalitarian justice and personal demands and concerns? The institutional approach to egalitarian justice or institutionalism offers the form of a response to this problem: individuals have the duty of justice to support and maintain egalitarian institutions but are free to pursue their personal and associational ends within the rules of these egalitarian institutions. 1 This reconciliation of justice and personal pursuits by means of a division of domain is well conveyed in John Rawls's remarks that “within the framework of background justice set up by the basic structure, individuals and associations may do as they wish insofar as the rules of institutions permit” (Rawls, 2001, 213). In this respect, Institutions have a certain normative primacy over personal ends: just institutional rules specify the terms within which individuals may rightly pursue their personal and relational ends.
