ABSTRACT
Fair procedures should promote, reflect, and support the need to show persons equal concern and respect. In a bargaining arrangement, like an athletic competition, personal goals are pursued within a broader context of cooperation, and co-operators, to be fair, must adhere to the appropriate procedures. Hard bargains are struck when one of the bargainers is in position to take advantage of the other. Situations where procedure is determinative of the fairness of an outcome are, according to John Rawls, matters of pure procedural justice. In the case of perfect procedural justice, he supposes that fairness can be known prior to the outcome of process and that procedures can be devised that guarantee the fair outcome will be realized. In the case of imperfect procedural justice Rawls again supposes that the desired outcome can be known in principle, but he also thinks that it is not possible to establish procedures that will guarantee the desired outcome.
