But an obvious problem arises...

But an obvious problem arises: how are we to require whether the arrangements of any particular social ordering are just or unjust? Rawls intellectual predecessors are Kant (who provides among other things the idea of the primacy of the right over the good and the regulatory idea of the social contract) and John Stuart Mill (who provides the spirit of tolerance).

Rawls thus chooses the right over the good - Kant wins over the Bentham.25 In nutshell, Rawls is trying to balance the need for growth in wealth, with respect for the least well off in the society. Whilst the general aim of utilitarian justice is to maximize social wealth.

Rawls holds his basic principles of justice based also upon a deontological respect for autonomy as checks upon such maximization.26 (C) (ii) - Robert Nozick’s Concept of Justice As opposed to utilitarian thinkers, libertarian thinker like Nozick share, a profound distaste for all theories which promote any idea of a social group which legitimates centralized social administration.

The political jurisprudence of Robert Nozick, characterized by is book ‘Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974)’ is the best known of the libertarian theories of justice. Nozick’s writings develop a theory of justice which reinforces a radical free market approach and fits a so-called minimal or night watchman state. It is no surprise that he concludes: “The minimal state is the most extensive state than can be justified.

Any state more extensive violates peoples rights.27 Nozick develops an entitlement theory of justice, whereby economic goods arise in society already encumbered with rightful claims to their ownership.28 The minimal state is limited in its legitimation of force to the protection of certain basic rights: it is the night watchman state of classical liberalism.

Under utilitarianism, or the later theory of Rawls, we could have redistribution policies but no redistribution is legitimate in the minimal state. In this context, Prof. Hart has rightly observed that “with the arrival of right based theories from thinkers like Robert Nozick and R. Dworkin, it may be that the epoch which Bentham opened is now closing: certainly among American political and legal philosophers.