An Appraisal on the Concept of Justice in John Rawls

Student: Chinaecherem Chinedu Dialoke (Project, 2025)
Department of Philosophy
University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State

Abstract

Justice as proposed by John Rawls deals with the fair distribution of rights, liberties and opportunities. This distribution should be arranged to benefit the least advantaged members of the society. Looking at our society today, there is unfair distribution of rights, liberties and opportunities. There is also the practice of inequality, injustice, partiality and favoritism where those who clearly merited a position for instance, a political office, are pushed aside just to favor an anointed candidate. In Africa today, injustice, partiality, favoritism and unfair distribution of rights seem to be prevalent. John Rawls theory of Justice will help us understand the need for Justice in our society and apply it in our political sphere for a fair and just society. The qualitative research method of critical analysis and exposition is applied in this study. Materials are sourced from journals, books, academic articles and from the internet.

Keywords
Distributive Justice and Justice as fairness
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