ABSTRACT
In the mid-1990s, Jurgen Habermas and John Rawls came head to head in a debate about their respective conceptions of law and politics. Observing the juncture of communication and justice from within communication studies, the first giant in sight is Habermas; observing the same juncture from within philosophy, the first contemporary giant is Rawls. This chapter gives an outline of Rawls’ oeuvre and refer to some of the debates that it both addressed and stimulated. The original position “corresponds to the state of nature in the traditional theory of the social contract”. Rawls was well aware that a theory of the good is a necessary component of any theory of justice regarding its “Ends”. Compared to distributive justice, which addresses the social distribution of rights and resources, and retributive justice, which attends to sanctions and punishments, procedural justice covers those institutions and interactions that are designed to determine what is right with reference to explicit and operational principles.
