Priority of liberty under non-ideal circumstances

This work addresses the applicability of Ralls’s theory of justice in non-ideal circumstances. The goal, more particularly, is to assess the urgency role that Rawls himself (1999, p. 216) and some interpreters (Stemplowska and Swift 2014, p. 117) confer to justice of fairness under non-ideal circumstances – here defined as circumstances in which the strict compliance condition (that social institutions abide by justice and that citizens follow institutional rules) is not met. In Ralls’s case, the target role means, in sum, that infringements to the first principle of justice (the basic liberties principles) must be treated as more serious and urging than infringements to the second principle, the same holding for the first part of the second principle (the fair equality of opportunity principle) in face of the second one (the difference principle). The paper’s main conclusion is that a “strong” understanding of this urgency role has unbearable consequences, worse still than those entailed by the same relations of lexical priority between principles under the (ideal) condition of strict compliance. Considering, for example, the priority of the first principle over the second one, a strong interpretation of the urgency would warrant the conclusion that attempts against basic liberties are always more serious than attempts against fair equality of opportunity or the difference principle. As a consequence, it would be always more urging to face infringements of basic liberties than seek for a fairer distribution of opportunities, income and wealth. It further follows that, according to the target role understood in this way, institutional improvements envisaging the second principle (both fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle) would have to be postponed if they pose some obstacle to advancements in the basic liberties realm. The problem is that, in circumstances of no strict compliance, scarcity of political means needed to make institutional improvements may impose total neglect of second principle issues until the first principle is wholly satisfied.