Abstract
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.
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Notes
- 1.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 3.
- 2.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism(New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 53.
- 3.
Arthur Ripstein, Equality, Responsibility, and the Law(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 206.
- 4.
Under this conception of persons, people also have the capacity for a sense of justice, that is, the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public conception of justice. See idemat 233.
- 5.
Rawls, supranote 2 at 54. Rawls points out that the distinction was discussed earlier by W. M. Sibley, “The Rational Versus the Reasonable,” in Philosophical Review62: 554 at 560. For Sibley, “knowing that people are rational we do not know what ends they will pursue only that they will pursue them intelligently. Knowing that people are reasonable where others are concerned, we know that they are willing to govern their conduct by a principle from which they and others can reason in common; and reasonable persons take into account the consequences of their actions on others’ well-being. The disposition to be reasonable is neither derived from nor opposed to the rational but it is incompatible with egoism, as it is related to the disposition to act morally.”
- 6.
Rawls, supranote 2 at 50.
- 7.
Idemat 53.
- 8.
See, in general, Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political but Not Metaphysical,” in John Rawls: Collected Papers,ed.Samuel Freeman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
- 9.
The best example of this position is John Stuart Mill’s famous “harm principle”: “The only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”
- 10.
I borrow this explanation from Arthur Ripstein, “Authority and Coercion” (2004), 32 Phil. & Pub. Aff. 2 at 10.
- 11.
Although most of my examples will come from the common law, my argument may be extended to civil law doctrines. In Chap. 9, for instance, my discussion of the doctrines of responsibility for economic loss and the doctrine of contracts for the benefit of third parties will also make reference to civil case law.
- 12.
Rawls, supranote 1 at 344–348.
- 13.
See my discussion of Charles Fried’s Contract as Promise(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981) inChap. 8.
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Hevia, M. (2013). Introduction. In: Reasonableness and Responsibility: A Theory of Contract Law. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 101. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4605-3_1
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