ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out the conceptual challenges entailed by the claim that people should be treated equally and offers some arguments for and against equality. Moral equality can, minimally, be understood as a negative: people should be treated equally. But the negative argument does not adequately capture the importance of moral equality. The idea of equality in Rawls’s theory is highly abstract, and the use of the veilitself tells us little about how people should be treated. Equal access is sometimes referred to as formal equality of opportunity, but equal access is the better term, as it encompasses access not just to jobs but also services. Equal opportunity is a much stronger principle of equality than equalaccess. As the name suggests, it requires that opportunities for acquiring favourable positions are equalised. Rawls justifies inequality by use of the difference principle, but that principle rests on recognising that any inequalities must be to the benefit of the worst-off.
