Neo-Kantian Epilogue: Rawls and Habermas

John Rawls (1921–2002) is of course celebrated as the author of the most famous work on “justice” produced in the twentieth century (A Theory of Justice, 1971). But he also wrote about “the rule of law,” in a (mainly neglected) subsection of his Justice book. The reason for this neglect is not far to seek: For while Rawls’ theory of justice is the most famous expansion of a (basically) Kantian view of Recht since Kant’s own Metaphysik der Sitten (1797), what Rawls says (by contrast) about the “rule of law” is sound and solid and orthodox but neither very original nor very striking. His theory of justice ranks him with the great political thinkers from Plato to Marx; but his writings on law are more reasonable and reliable than extraordinary.