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• Foreword
• Preface
• The Reason of Rules
• 1.: The Constitutional Imperative
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Reasons For Rules
• III.: Rules of Games
• IV.: Rules of the Road
• V.: Rules of the Market Order
• VI.: Rules of Political Order
• VII.: The Importance of Rules
• 2.: The Contractarian Vision
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Noncontractarian Constitutionalism
• III.: Individuals As Sources of Value
• IV.: Contract and Exchange
• V.: Politics In the Exchange Perspective
• VI.: Unanimity As the Contractual Ideal
• VII.: Agreement On Rules and the Veils of Ignorance and Uncertainty
• VIII.: Conclusions
• 3.: The Myth of Benevolence *
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Private Good and Public Good
• III.: Science, Truth, and Politics
• IV.: The Authoritarian Imperative
• V.: Majoritarian Democracy In the Noncontractarian Paradigm
• VI.: The Aim of Politics
• 4.: Modeling the Individual For Constitutional Analysis
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Homo Economicus In Politics: the Argument For Symmetry
• III.: Science and the Empiricist Defense
• IV.: A Methodological Defense of the Differential Interest Model of Behavior
• V.: Social Evaluation and Quasi-risk Aversion
• VI.: Gresham’s Law In Politics
• VII.: Summary
• 5.: Time, Temptation, and the Constrained Future *
• Preface
• Part 1.: Individual Private Choice
• I.: Introduction
• II.: The Ultimate Z ’s
• III.: Preferences For Preferences
• IV.: Past, Present, and Future
• Part 2.: Individual Public Choice
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Society With a History
• III.: Temporal Interdependence
• IV.: An Illustration
• V.: Moral Rules And/or Constitutional Commitment
• 6.: Politics Without Rules, I: Time and Nonconstrained Collective Action
• I.: Introduction
• II.: The Social Discount Rate
• III.: The High-tax Trap
• IV.: The Inflation Trap
• V.: The Public-debt Trap
• VI.: Other Examples
• VII.: Conclusions
• 7.: Rules and Justice
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Just Conduct and the Notion of Desert
• III.: Justice and Promise Keeping
• IV.: Justice Among Rules
• V.: Just Rules, Agreed-on Rules, and Just Conduct
• VI.: Conclusions
• 8.: Politics Without Rules, II: Distributive Justice and Distributive Politics
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Distributive Justice: the Conventional View
• III.: The Constitutional Perspective and Institutional Incidence
• IV.: The Incidence of Unrestricted Majoritarianism
• V.: Tax Rules and Distribution Under Majority Rule
• VI.: Direct Constitutionalism and Distributive Justice
• VII.: Summary
• 9.: Is Constitutional Revolution Possible In Democracy?
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Pareto-superior Change and Wicksellian Unanimity
• III.: Distributional Limits and Prospective Rules
• IV.: Status Quo Entitlements and Distributional Envy
• V.: Constitutional Change and Free Riders
• VI.: The Role of Norms
• VII.: Toward a Civic Religion

IV.

Justice among Rules

Although the discussion of just conduct set out in the preceding two sections has some affinities with notions in contemporary social philosophy, it is not the most common approach to “justice.” Typically, justice is introduced as a criterion for evaluating alternative rules or institutions. This criterial usage of justice characterizes many strands of normative political and social theory—from natural law to modern theses advancing the norms for “distributive” and “social” justice.5 It is, in this sense, much more common to think of justice constraining rules than to think of rules constraining justice.

In this section, we advance the proposition that the business of deciding what rules are just—that is, of deriving a meaning for justice as a criterion of choice among rules—is a particular instance of decision making within prevailing rules. Such an argument requires the recognition that the decision as to what the rules shall be is itself made in the context of more abstract rules that apply to the choice among rules. We shall call rules at this more abstract level meta-rules. Then it follows from our earlier discussion that rules are just if agreed-on meta-rules dictating their selection have been observed.

Although this is an entirely natural extension of the Hobbesian position, we here part company with Hobbes, at least in the strict sense of Hobbes’s exposition. In Hobbes’s view, the notion of an “unjust law” is meaningless. “No law,” he claims, “can be unjust. The law is made by the sovereign power, and all that is done by such power is warranted and owned by every one of the people; and that which every man will have so, no man can say is unjust.”6 But as Hobbes’s discussion makes clear, all this is contingent on individuals’ agreement on the principle of sovereign authority. It is the more abstract agreement on the structure of civil order that makes the law derived under that structure “just.” And so it is for us—for the essence of the constitutionalist approach is that political action (including the making of laws) be conducted according to certain rules (or meta-rules). A “just law” is then a meaningful concept; it is one that is derived under agreed-on institutions or, equivalently, one that does not violate agreed-on rules under which those institutions operate.

It is important to recognize that we are here weakening the requirements for just conduct. Hitherto, conduct was described as just if it did not violate agreed-on rules related to that conduct. Now, conduct is also considered to be just if it does not violate just rules (defined as rules emerging under agreed-on meta-rules). Since the meta-rules in question may not require agreement on rules directly, an “agreed-on rule” and a “just rule” are distinct concepts. We may not require a rule to be agreed on for it to be binding, provided that the rule in question emerged under agreed-on meta-rules.

The distinction between agreed-on rules and just rules—the recognition that agreement can be applied at different levels of abstraction—somewhat complicates the discussion of the requirements of justice. This is an issue we shall attempt to clarify in Section V. At this point, we shall address a different issue, which is related to the connection between abstraction and voluntariness. That is, since justice within rules is contingent on the rules having been voluntarily agreed to, we must make some sense of the notion of voluntary agreement at the more abstract, meta-rule level. What does it mean to refer to a meta-rule as the subject of voluntary consent? What, for example, would involuntary consent involve at that meta-rule level?

In fact, the shift to more and more abstract levels of discourse serves to modify concern about the voluntariness of agreement—at least in one major sense. One can, of course, in principle imagine direct physical coercion being applied by one agent to others at the meta-rule level. But one has to ask whether the application of force is at all likely. At the extreme level, where the thick Rawlsian veil of ignorance is drawn and individuals are totally uncertain as to their future positions, individuals have no interests to defend. Any reason that any one of them has for preferring one set of rules over another will be a reason for all others to prefer that set of rules as well. In what sense would, or could, any individual find reason to coerce others?

Moreover, we must bear in mind that the agents at this abstract level wish to secure agreements voluntarily, and for good reason: It is the capacity of such voluntary agreements to establish moral obligations that drives the whole “constitutional exercise.” Agents desire a stable institutional order so that they will have an appropriate context in which to pursue their (imagined) future life plans. If a forced agreement will not serve to legitimate the rules, it will not establish a moral obligation to abide by the rules; so forceful extraction of agreement has no point.

Furthermore, reference to extreme need, and more general concerns about relative positions in the constitutional status quo that might be taken to offend the “voluntariness” requirement, also seems irrelevant at this most abstract level. If individuals are totally ignorant as to their future positions, they have no separately identifiable interests; there is a fundamental equality of position. It seems impossible that agreements reached in such a context could reflect unacceptable differences in status quo positions. Accordingly, however exactly one might wish to express the requirements for voluntariness in agreements reached, all such requirements appear to be met to an increasing extent as one moves to higher and higher levels of abstraction in the rule formation exercise. This fact represents a possible major justification for the whole “constitutionalist” approach.

[5. ]We discuss distributive justice in constitutional perspective in Chapter 8.

[6. ]Hobbes, Leviathan, part 2, ch. 30, p. 185.