ABSTRACT
Two possible ways to account for the formal element of fairness have emerged from the discussion thus far: Adherence to rule and fidelity to social practice. Procedural fairness looks to adherence to the prescriptive rules that regulate a particular activity. Procedural rules that set the standards of play may be judged unfair according to the standards of background fairness if they obscure or are inconsistent with the realization of the "right result." The rules that are constitutive and regulative of certain social practices cannot be considered arbitrary or independently variable. While the ethic of fair bargaining identifies the right way to bargain, it is not readily articulated in a set of prescriptive rules that tells one how to bargain or that constitutes the bargaining process. To bargain is to enter a transaction process with another in which both parties seek to identify a point of agreement, involving some sort of mutual exchange, that both consider preferable to the status quo.
