This article sets out some of the key concepts found in Justice as Fairness, a theory of justice propounded by John Rawls, and then presents Amartya Sen’s account for justice to discuss to what extent it may constitute a response to Rawls’s theory.
Rawls and Sen share similar views about utilitarianism in the sense that they both take a dim view of proposing such a system that aims to stimulate the welfare or happiness of the greatest number. However, they visibly differ in their methodologies used in refuting the utilitarian argument. Justice as fairness is an exemplar of a liberal political conception of justice through which Rawls construes the most fundamental ideas implicit in the public political culture of a liberal democratic society. He describes the organisation of the major political, social and economic institutions; the legal apparatus, the market, the family, and the political order, which constitute the framework of this society as the ‘basic structure’.