Justice as Fairness and Wide Economic Liberties: A Critical Reflection on the Possibility of Reconciliation between Classical and High Liberal Traditions

In arguing for justice as fairness, John Rawls distinguishes between two types of social institutions and, according to this distinction, proposes two principles of justice with a lexical order. According to the first principle, citizens have an equal right to the most adequate scheme of basic liberties. Then he arranges the list of basic liberties based on the necessary requirements to develop and exercise two moral powers. A new approach called market democracy claimed that, on Rawlsian assumption and justificatory framework, the thick conception of economic liberties should be included in the list of basic liberties. So, justice as fairness entails the acceptance of classical liberalism, i.e., the legitimacy of thick economic liberties. With a critical reflection on and reference to Rawlsian assumptions, this study tries to show the inconsistency of market democracy’s claims. First, with reference to essential requirements to develop and exercise of the moral powers, thick economic liberties could not be justified; second, these liberties are not consistent with the distributional requirements of the first and second principles; third, market democracy is inconsistent with the argument form original position.